The Devastis Factor
by IrkenIckyChips
Summary: No one ever said growing up was easy...
1. Eh, You Knew it was Gonna Happen One Day

Dib pounded at the glass with his fists. The pink liquid he was floating in slowed the impact, and the glass resounded with a sharp *Bink, Bink!* that only furthered his frustration. With effort, he sucked more of the liquid into his lungs--there was no air in the cylindrical glass chamber he was suspended in, but somehow this pink stuff was keeping him alive. For now. He stopped trying to pound his way out and sunk to the bottom of the stasis tube, his hope sinking with him.  
  
"Comfy, Dib?" Zim called from a control panel. He was fingering buttons and knobs and the word "CONNECTING" flashed in irken on the control screen. Dib couldn't respond; he only pressed himself against the glass and glared at him. "Good. You're going to be here for a while. Now that I've got you where I want you, I figure it would be waaaay too easy to just liquefy you outright. So instead, I'll just keep your miserable weakened frame alive down here so you can see everything that happens when the Armada arrives..."  
  
Zim turned and approached the tube. "Which shouldn't take too long."  
  
A tone at the console caused Zim to turn back to the transmission screen. "Ahhh, just in time." He straightened his antennae. The screen flickered on, showing two very tall irkens, one in red armor and one in purple armor. They were turned away from the screen.  
  
Red glanced behind him, and turned grudgingly towards the screen. "Aw, now what?" Purple looked and turned as well. "Zim?"  
  
"Yes, my Tallest." Zim bowed, left claw to right shoulder. "I have called to give a progress report, and to report a great leap ahead in my efforts to prepare the planet for invasion. The greatest threat to my mission has been neutralized." Zim pointed to the angry 13-year-old inside the stasis tube. "Here he is, my Tallest. My greatest nemesis, bottled up like so many Devastian tail worms: Wrinkled and slimy, and perpetually swimming." He patted the glass. "You like?"  
  
Red and Purple looked at each other. "THIS is what you wanted to show us? An ugly big-headed monster boy in a bottle?" Purple chortled.  
  
Dib sneered.  
  
"…Um, yeah! I mean, he's been my greatest threat. Now that he's out of the way--"  
  
"They'll be no stopping you from taking over that dirtball, yeah, we know." Red mocked. He glanced over at Purple, who nodded at him and turned towards the off-screen tech officers. "...Actually, Zim, Purple and I have been talking, and we don't really need you to try to take that planet anymore."  
  
"What? I'm being reassigned? In my moment of triumph??" Zim said quizzically.   
  
"No, Zim, you're being sentenced."  
  
"Hurry up! Crack his code!" Purple blurted to the techs.  
  
"…My Tallest? Sentenced?? W-what code?" Zim stammered.  
  
"Oh, just a safeguard in case you ever decide to come back." Red filled in.   
  
"What?" As though on cue, the rumbling machinations of his base ceased altogether, leaving behind an eerie silence. The lights went out, replaced by the dark glow of red emergency lights. The computers and screens were still on, and provided most of the illumination in the room. "What's going on!?" Zim stumbled to the nearest console and started to frantically push buttons. "What happened? Where's the guidance program? My spaceship manufacturing schematics? The Voot Cruiser's navigation systems!? What have you done!?!" Zim screamed at the transmission screen. "I won't even be able to return home, without those systems!!"  
  
"That's the whole idea." Red said smugly, sitting back in his chair. "Checked your Voot Cruiser lately, Zim?"  
  
Zim's eyes widened into perfect red circles. "You wouldn't…"  
  
"DO IT!" Purple yelled to the techs again. An innocent beep drifted over the speaker, but it was echoed by an explosion that rocked Zim's entire base. One of the two electrode plugs attached to Dib's holding tank dislodged, and shattered the tank, allowing glass-laden suspension fluid to flood everywhere.  
  
"What did you do?" Zim yelled, standing back up from the tremor.   
  
"Blew up your ship." Red said matter-of-factly. "C'mon, you don't think we'd actually raze all that software and leave your Cruiser behind, do you? That'd defeat the entire purpose."  
  
"But, I'm an invader! What possible purpose could I have besides invading?"  
  
"We never SAID you were an invader." Purple said flatly. "We said we'd send you to a planet. We were reassigning your exile."  
  
"No!" Zim yelled. "Y-you're leaving me here!?"  
  
"Well, we figured it was either that, or send you out an airlock if we ever saw you again. But that would require you to come near us…"  
  
Zim stood there, his crimson eyes pleading, looking pathetic before his rulers.   
  
"I couldn't have said it better, Pur. Oh, and don't take this too hard, Zim. After all, you didn't actually fail us…" Red began.  
  
"Not this time, anyway." Chimed in Purple.  
  
"We're just tired of you. Bye, now!"  
  
The maniacal laughter of the Tallest ended with the transmission. Zim stood there, staring at the screen. Overcome with a sudden surge of panic, he started mashing in the buttons on the communications panel. Each time, an error symbol of a stylized irken with its tongue out flashed on the screen. "No! My Tallest, do you read me?? Come in!! Don't do this to meeeee!!" He slammed his fists into the panel, and stood there, doubled over the control panel, shaking his head silently.   
  
On the glass-strewn floor, coughing and gasping, Dib managed get up all the fluid in his lungs. He looked up and blinked in the poorly-lit communications room. Zim was still standing there, shattered glass and thick pink fluid in puddles around him. Dib couldn't see his face, but he could hear everything inside that tank. "Didn't... quite go as planned... did it, Zim?" He managed to croak out. Zim made no motion that he even heard him. Before Dib could repeat his jeer, however, he walked out of the communications room, stopping only once to let GIR hydroplane by on a large shard of glass.  
  
The house looked like an unfinished computer model. The roof had been blown completely off. The holographic poles were bent and toppled, causing some of the walls to flicker like a poor TV transmission, and others just to fade to nothing halfway up the side of the house. Chunks of unintelligible metal alloys were strewn everywhere. The buildings on either side of the house were relatively unscathed, though the windows were blown out. The lockdown containment system that kept undesirables away from the VootRunner also contained the explosion, fortunately. That still didn't change the fact that the base was a mangled shell of what it was. And it wasn't showing any signs of rebuilding itself.  
  
Dib stumbled over a pile of debris into the living room, and GIR happily sprinted in front of him and dove into it, squealing. Zim was slumped on the couch, and his antennae twitched towards them when they entered, but that was the only indication that he knew they were there.  
  
"What are you doing?" Dib asked.  
  
"What does it look like?" Zim replied sharply. "'Invader' Zim..." He began, showing his newfound contempt for the title, and then allowing all the false melodrama to drain from his voice. "has been betrayed by his own Tallest. I can't even get home, now. I'm stranded on a hostile planet. The repair systems for the base are obviously fried. What am I supposed to do? All I can do is wait, and eventually the stink humans will show up to piece out the explosion." Zim blinked his red eyes slowly. "They'll get more than they bargained for…"  
  
"So that's it, then? You've been eluding me for the past two years. You've lost your ride home, and now you're just gonna give yourself up?"  
  
Zim looked at him. "Stupid human." He began coldly. He touched the cuff of his sleeve, which widened into a metal bracer with a large red button. "I always hoped I wouldn't have to use this. Well, I'm as good as dead anyway, so I may as well take a few out with me. I don't care if YOU leave: They'll know you were right, whether or not I kill you." He turned away from Dib. "You win, Dib. Now let me be."  
  
Dib looked up at the clouds through what was the living room ceiling. "Where'd you put my laptop, Zim?"  
  
Zim turned and blinked at him. "In the kitchen foody thingy. Why?"  
  
Dib stumbled over a random piece of something in the kitchen doorway. There were only two walls left of the kitchen, and there was rubble and indistinguishable metal scraps everywhere. His laptop had fallen from the counter in the explosion, and was lying on the floor, halfway buried. Hoping desperately that nothing was damaged, he dug it out and stuck the IO plug into one of the remaining ports in the wall. He sat on the floor and turned on the computer, and it whirred to life.  
  
"C'mon, Dib. You've done this before." Dib mumbled to himself. typing furiously. He sighed in relief as a one-eyed Irken symbol flashed onto his screen. "Okay. System files… Self-repair, self-repair program… Yes! It's still there! All I have to do is modify it…and… Activate!"   
  
He punched the enter key. The remains of the base rumbled violently underneath him He stood up shakily, adjusting his glasses. The rubble started to disappear, or rather, evaporate. In a matter of seconds, the tubular edge supports began to reconstruct themselves, growing new segments like a kind of oversized metallic vine. In between the supports, glaring pink lasers began to crisscross with a dull humming sound. The static charge in the room made it feel like the air itself would combust any second. As the laser mesh solidified into more familiar form, the humming sound lessened. Dib looked up, and could see the walls still developing above him. The second floor was practically finished when the ceiling closed up above him like a camera aperture. Darting through the back door, he looked up just in time to see the roof close up above the same, weird-looking "house" as before. Everything looked exactly like it used to.  
  
That's good. No evidence.  
  
Dib ran back into Zim's house. He made his way into the living room, where Zim stood, dumbfounded, his back to Dib. "I thought the Tallests had deleted the repair programs..." He boggled.  
  
"I wanna delete something!!" Gir babbled sitting on the living room floor, and quickly took off towards the kitchen.  
  
"They didn't, it was the execute files that were erased." Dib answered as GIR skipped by him. Zim, surprised, turned to face his old enemy. "I used the ones from my Crash Blast'em game to replace it. I'm surprised it even worked."  
  
Zim blinked at him disbelievingly. "Why are you helping me?" He said. No drama, no contempt was in his voice. Just a question. It was the most "real" he had ever sounded.  
  
"The same reason you didn't just kill me out of spite a few minutes ago. Besides, I heard everything that happened down there." Dib answered, producing a wig and a pair of lenses from his coat pocket and shoving them in Zim's arms. "All bets are off. You'd better get this stuff on." He urged. "We'll have some debunking to do in a couple of minutes. Everyone'll SWEAR that they heard an explosion." Dib glanced out the window and smirked at the irony. "Mass hallucination, probably..."   
  
Zim stared at Dib, and unexpectedly started to chuckle. "Or swamp gas..." He added. "You can always blame it on swamp gas."  
  
Dib started to laugh. "Yeah. Stupid humans will believe it, too!" 


	2. The Tallest

The green moon Xeraxis was high in the window of the Devastis Irken High Conciliate building. Purple stood watching the soldiers march on the grounds outside, perfectly in time.   
  
"Man, I do not want to do this again." Red whined. He was sprawled over a couch, and sucking on a soda. "Every time I turn around, we're being summoned again. Seems like we've been spending more time here than aboard the Massive, where we should be." He pounded on the padded arm of the couch. The room was lavishly furnished, as were all the rooms meant to accommodate the Tallest.   
  
"I know, but what can we do? Tell it 'no?'" Purple answered. "Besides, it wouldn't summon us if it didn't have good reason."  
  
Red stopped slurping his soda. "What do you mean by that?" He said nervously.  
  
Before Purple could respond, a lanky irken official with purple eyes sauntered into the doorway. "My lords. The chamber is ready."  
  
Red and Purple walked onto the small circular platform, the quiet humming sound from their hoverskirts echoing in the spherical chamber. Just before them, a great suspended metal sphere loomed ominously. Tubes and umbilicals that connected the sphere to the ceiling and floor that gave the object a sickly organic feel, and several green glass eyes spotted the mechanical apparition. Though obviously unliving, the eyes seemed to stare at the two with a sharpness that pierced through their armor and any defenses and mental blocks they had set up, real or imagined.  
  
Slowly, the metal floor in front of both of them began to liquify and form itself into two spheres. At about a foot wide, the orbs separated from the floor and hovered like oversized drops of mercury. Both Tallest glanced at each other, and then simultaneously knelt before the orbs, reaching out and grasping them, and bowing their heads. They had practiced this so many times before that after 250 years, it'd gotten to be second nature to coordinate their movements and efforts when it was really necessary. But, no matter how many times they came here and did this, they never really got used to it. Both irkens gritted their teeth and braced themselves.  
  
The Control Brain exploded into their minds, blaring inquiries and commands that thundered through their skulls like foghorns pumped though an amplifier, all at a rate faster than they could think. Purple, being the analytical one, had figured out a long time ago that most of the stuff happened below the surface. Their subconscious did most of the work, he said. On the surface, however, they could only make out one simple idea at a time, but had gotten pretty good at piecing the fragments together.  
  
"EARTH--ZIM--WHY?"   
  
Red was the first to respond; he always was. All the same, he had to make special effort to direct his thoughts to speech. It was trying to talk over a tornado. "Uhh. We'd gotten tired of his... daah... ineptitude and... eh... wanted to be rid of him...!" He shuddered as he clutched the orb. "We could never... uhh... use that planet, anyway--  
  
The multiple glassy eyes flamed red. Red convulsed and screamed as electricity suddenly surged through him. He was thrown from the orb and fell backwards on the floor with a sickening metallic thud, shaking and gasping for air. His respirator was making a weird hissing sound. Purple watched his friend lie there but didn't dare come to his aid: the same thing would only happen to him.   
  
"FOOL--EARTH--PERFECT--CONTROL--DESIRE--ZIM--DANGER--FORSEE--REMOVE--EARTH--PERFECT"  
  
"But, why!? ...Perfect? ...What for?" Purple yelled, haltingly.  
  
The eyes pulsed again with green light. A horrible gurgled whisper drifted through the Tallest's heads...  
  
"MITOSIS..."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"I've got ya now, Zim!" Dib yelled, blaster trained at the menacing four-legged spidery shadow that skittered along the circular wall of the arena. He pulled the trigger and discharged two plasma blasts, which were dodged by the shadow and impacted the wall, the flash reflecting off two glaring magenta eyes in the darkness. Two identical plasma blasts barreled from the wall towards Dib, who rolled away from the blasts. Landing face-down on the metal floor, he propped himself up just in time to see Zim leap from the shadows, the needle-sharp points of his mechanical legs aimed directly at him. Dib ducked down and covered his head, and concentrated. With a metallic flash and a yelp, Zim's trajectory changed and the little green Irken crashed several yards behind Dib.  
  
Dib quickly leapt to his feet, while Zim staggered like a drunken arachnid, trying to stand up. Dib looked up to see two long jointed metallic legs extending over him like skeletal wings. He concentrated, and one waved back and forth at Zim. "Hey, I think these things are actually getting easier to control!" Biting his lip, he forced the remaining two out from behind his trench coat. With effort, the 4 legs hit the metal floor with a clamor, and slowly Dib started to rise on them.  
  
Zim was fully upright now. "All right then, Dib, let's see you handle this!" And with that, he aimed his blaster at Dib, and started firing. Dib yelped and leapt from the floor onto the wall, the needle-sharp metal appendages sliding a little and making sparks until he got his hold . He skittered up the wall and leapt across to the huge metallic stalactite that made up part of the ceiling, trying to take cover. He could hear plasma blasts accompany the whistling of exhaust through the ports in the hanging structure he clung onto. "Ha! You can't get me here, can ya, Zim?" He yelled.  
  
The blasts stopped. "You forget who you're talking to, human. Eeeagh!" Zim yelled, and Dib heard a metallic banging and scratching sound from underneath him. He looked down, to see Zim steadying himself on the point of the stalactite, blaster in his hand. He'd managed to jump the 20 feet from the floor! Dib yelped and started to climb. Zim's blaster shots barely missed him as he flailed his arms in a misdirected instruction to his spiderlegs.  
  
"Hah! This is almost too--uh?" Zim started to gloat, but changed his tone when the metal tips to his spiderlegs started to slip as friction was overcome by gravity. He tried to redrive the front legs into the metal, but before he could the back legs gave way, sending him with a scream and a crash to the arena floor.  
  
"Zim??" Dib heard him land, and then leapt haltingly from stalactite to wall to floor, his spiderlegs landing with sparks and a metallic clanging sound. The metal appendages gingerly set him down, and then pulled obediently behind him, without folding up. He ran over to the mess of tangled metal legs and dazed Irken in the middle of the floor. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Ungh. Yeah." Zim mumbled back, sitting up groggily. His splayed-out spiderlegs twitched chaotically around him. "Why wouldn't I be?" He rubbed the back of his head and grimaced.  
  
"Oh. Okay. As long as you're alright…" Dib said, and aimed his blaster at Zim and shot him at point blank range. Zim flinched, but only out of instinct, as the harmless whisp spread around him, lighting up his outline and marking him as being shot. "I win." Dib said, holstering the blaster and helping Zim up. "Only because I got lucky, though. I still can't control these things very well." He involuntarily glanced behind him as his spiderlegs articulated creepily. He focused on them again, and each leg retracted individually behind his trenchcoat.  
  
Zim's legs retracted as well, and he walked behind Dib and removed a familiar-looking oval-shaped object with pale orange spots. "Hey, you'll never be as good an I am, but you're just enough of a challenge to keep me entertained." He scoffed. He started to walk alongside Dib, carrying the Utility Pak. "I'm suprised that the superficial nerve interface is even working on this thing. Usually, these Paks only work if they're, directly attached to your spine, instead of just fastened to your back with a gravity attachment." Zim reached up and tousled Dib's hair. "Must be that big head of yours..."  
  
"Uh--Hey!" Dib said, straightening his hair. He reached around and got Zim in a fake headlock. "Remember what happened last time you did that? You don't mess with my hair." He said jokingly.  
  
"You're proud of that mess on your head? Heh, and you say I look weird!" Zim grinned, writhing around and pulling out from under Dib's arm. As they approached the elevator, Zim stopped. "Go on ahead of me. I'll catch up."  
  
Dib nodded and stood on the elevator, and slowly descended downward.  
  
Zim placed the pak he was holding against a metal plate fastened to the arena wall, and it stuck fast with a loud *Chunk!*, next to a row of other paks, similarly equipped. He turned around and looked back at the arena. The converted power generator still hummed in partial operation, a hollow shell of what it once was. Once a crucial part of his impenetrable fortress, now it was used mainly for amusement. The blades of the exhaust fan cast slowly rotating shadows on the floor. Outcroppings in the wall and the stalactite-like electrode on the ceiling made for very useful cover, though; a pretty good spot for laser tag, thought Zim in consolation. He sighed and followed Dib into the elevator. 


	3. Health Class: The Final Frontier

"Hey Zim. Are you coming?" Dib called behind him, squeezing through another portal in the tunnel. So long ago, the base had been created to accommodate for Zim-sized creatures. It had been one year since the final contact by the Tallest, and Dib was no longer Zim-sized. He was already more than an inch taller, and was beginning to feel it in the claustrophobic tunnels beneath the base.  
  
"Trust me, it's not like I'm not trying." Responded Zim, who was climbing a ladder behind him. Zim hadn't changed much during the past year. He had gone out and found some earth clothes that he liked, since he couldn't stand to see himself in his invader uniform anymore. Old habits die hard, however, and the red shirt and black jeans he wore now looked a lot like his old garb. Zim was navigating his way slowly and laboriously behind Dib, but not having much luck. So far, he'd managed to get caught on every rivet, wire, and outcropping in the tunnel. When he passed a low doorway, he ran smack into it with a metallic DINK! "Dh, ow…" Zim hissed, rubbing his forehead. "Eh, that's never happened before."  
  
Dib glanced behind him. "Are you sure you're alright, Zim? Usually you're a mile ahead of me. You seem pretty clumsy lately. I mean, you even let me beat you in laser tag."  
  
"Don't remind me. I still want a rematch." Zim smirked and pointed at Dib.  
  
"Okay. You're on!" Dib replied, his voice cracking. He turned and continued climbing upwards.  
  
The hatch to Zim's main control room opened with a loud clang. A year before, this room had been the base of operations for Zim's little corner of Operation Impending Doom II, but now it was mostly used as a computer library and data analysis room. Zim was stuck on Earth, so he figured he'd better make the best of the situation and learn as much as he could about the dustball he was on.   
  
Dib shimmied though the portal, and Zim followed. "Whoo! You may have to remodel your base eventually, Zim. If we get any taller--"  
  
Dib heard Zim gasp behind him. He twisted around. "Was it something I said?"  
  
Zim was rubbing the knot on his forehead and blinking in disbelief. "Ugh... Taller?? We??"  
  
"Yeah. Every time I see my dad, he keeps mentioning 'how much I've grown'." He rolled his eyes. "It gets old after a while, but at least he's paying attention...."  
  
Zim turned on his heel and faced the main computer monitor. "Computer! Scan me and run an analysis, complete with height-weight chart!"  
  
"Oh, all right..." The speakers whined. A laser line shot from an eye above the monitor, and swept Zim's body up and down. Irken characters filled the video screen.   
  
Dib walked up behind him. "What's the big deal, Zim?"  
  
Zim's eyes widened in surprise, as he pointed to a group of glyphs on the screen. "There!" He blinked. "You're right! I must not have noticed or something! I'm fourteen ticks taller than I was at the great assigning!"  
  
"Zim? It's no big deal, you know. It's not like you aren't supposed to--"  
  
Zim stopped him with a glance.  
  
"…You weren't supposed to get any taller, were you Zim?"  
  
"No." Zim said quickly. He started to pace, scratching his antenna. "Well, that explains my clumsiness... I don't believe it. I stopped growing 60 or some years ago… I was supposed to stay this short for the rest of my life… This isn't normal…" He stopped, and smirked. "Not that it isn't welcome…"  
  
"Oh, yeah. Status is based on height where you come from." Dib said blankly, watching Zim continue to pace. "But I've seen Irkens a lot taller than you. What about those two jerky tallest ones?"  
  
"They're only the Tallest because they were MADE that way. That's SUPPOSED to be the way it works. You do something great, you get an injection, you get a little taller. Repeat process." Zim made a cyclic motion with his hand.   
  
Dib stood there, unblinking. "You know, in a weird way, that kind of makes sense…"  
  
"But this is something completely different. Uninduced, spontaneous growth like this shouldn't happen. It's too random. It's unpredictable. It--" He stopped pacing and glanced at Dib. "It may be dangerous..." He'd never seen Zim worried before. Zim quickly moved to the computer console and began pushing buttons. "I'll have to run some experiments, to see what it is on Earth that's doing this to me."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Dib and Zim sat the first two seats of the classroom, Zim playing with a pencil, Dib cleaning his glasses with the inside of his trenchcoat. The fall colors were at their brightest on the leaves outside, which many of their fellow eighth-graders were content to stare at through the windows. The teacher was late, which was unusual for he first day of a new semester, and the entire class was starting to get antsy.   
  
"Hey, I heard the old health teacher died last week from a heart attack." A gothed-out Zita blurted, her spider earrings bouncing as she turned her head.   
  
"Go figure." Dib mumbled, shoving his glasses onto his face again. "Any idea who they got to replace him?"  
  
"Psh. No." She responded as though Dib's addressing her had been a mortal insult. She quickly turned around in her chair and tried to find someone else to talk to--anything to keep away from the geek squad, apparently. Dib's eyes fell back to his desk. Same old thing every year.  
  
"Why must we be kept WAITING like this?" Zim spat, slowly twirling his pencil around his fingers, eyes narrowing behind his fake human-pupiled lenses...  
  
Just then, a familiar hissing sound drifted through the open door like the warning call of a giant rattlesnake. All the students turned and stared at the doorway.  
  
"No way..." Chunk blinked.  
  
"It can't be..." Melvin exclaimed.  
  
The hissing sound grew louder, and a shadowy black figure slithered through. She turned her hideously wrinkled form towards the class, opened her cracked lips, and spoke. "Attention, class. For those of you who don't already know or are too brain-dead to remember, my name is Ms. Bitters, and this is health 101. The school board instituted this class in an attempt to ease the minds of psychotic pre-teens like yourselves and to inform you of your hideous imminent transition into adulthood. I'd like to explain to all of you that I was only forced into this job after being discharged from the elementary skool after the SUPPOSED incident with the pet snake in Mr. Elliot's class." She twitched. "Which I shall refuse to comment on from this moment forward!!"  
  
The entire class cringed.  
  
"Needless to say, I promise to be neither comforting, nor informative. The endless weighted statistics and mindless passages in your textbook should be sufficient to scare those of you genuinely curious about your bodies into submission. Now open up your textbooks and memorize pages 1 through 50. You will be quizzed on this..." 


	4. Small Universe After All?

Heya! Yet another (painfullly short) chapter up! I would have tacked on more sooner, but some small details are being revamped since the Wormbaby crash... (For those of you who don't know what that is, pray you never find out...) For that reason, the posts might be a bit... er... erratic or something. Meh. I need sleep.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Zim shivered against the cold walking home from Skool. The first real chill of fall had finally set in during class, and he was really feeling it now. He cut through an open gate in someone's back yard. He figured it'd be faster if he took the most direct route--a relative straight line that led him through a network of back yards, alleys and driveways. He and Dib had parted ways after class; Dib had homework, and Zim had some more experiments to do anyway. So far, he was having no luck with the work he had done in the past week or so. His own bloodwork had shown some growth hormones that were usually only found in smeets, but why they were running through his veins NOW, he had no idea.   
  
He had tested everything: From air and water supplies to his own genetic composition, and had found nothing really "wrong" beyond the scope of an alien ecosystem. His lack of progress was at once aggravating and worrisome. He was having dreams lately of finding himself with eyeballs on his palms and other, more bizarre mutations. Just thinking bout it made him shudder more than the cold.  
  
Zim eventually abandoned the maze of side-paths and narrow streets to return to the sidewalk, and was snapped out of his train of thought by a strange sound, echoing over the ugly brick buildings lining the street. A very fast, tapping sound like something hard and sharp hitting concrete over and over again. He suddenly had the feeling that there was someone out there, watching him. He glanced nervously behind him, and found nothing there. Zim shook his head, berating himself for being paranoid. Even if there were someone following him, there was still nothing any human can throw at him that he couldn't handle. Maybe he'd just been working too hard. The pressures of keeping up a facade at skool, coupled with his recent experiments, were probably starting to get to him. He turned and continued walking home. Turning into an alley, he first glanced around him to make sure there was no one there. He scoffed at his own behavior, and plunged into the alley.   
  
For some reason, the narrow street seemed longer than normal. Zim seemed to jump at every sound. What caused him to stop, though, was a rhythmic tapping sound echoing between the buildings. Footsteps. He stopped walking. "All right! I know you're here, stalker creature! I know you've been following me! Show yourself!" Zim yelled, feeling both ridiculous and justified in his actions. The echoes stopped. "Who is that? Dib, if that's you, you're in for the probing of your life, you hear me?" He said aloud. He turned around just in time to see a shadow disappear behind a corner. "Hey!" He yelled, taking off after the phantasm. He rounded the corner into another alley, flanked on either side by apartment buildings and crisscrossed up above by rusted fire escapes. There were dumpsters and boxes littering the street, but he didn't see anyone. Taking a few steps forward, he visually scanned the ground. He knew there was no way that the guy would be able to climb, but he absentmindedly looked up anyway, to see what looked like a giant spider latched onto the brick wall above him. He reeled back in shock, and the shadow took off up the building on four legs.  
  
Mechanical legs. Spiderlegs.  
  
"Hey!! Dib, are you crazy?! Where are you going??" Zim yelled, glanced around him nervously, and sprouted his own spiderlegs and gave chase, clinging to the fire escape for added support and speed. He clatter the iron structure made didn't bother him as much as the fact that the both of them were headed for the rooftop, where everyone would be able to see them. He overtook him quickly and moved a couple of yards to the side--the better to mess with his sense of distance. What was Dib thinking? Surely he knew better than this...  
  
Reaching the top of the building, Zim quickly crouched on the metal appendages like a cat ready to pounce, and leapt directly into the shadow's path as it emerged over the side of the building. At the nucleus of his pursuer's spiderlegs was a mess of oversized clothing, with no identifiable features. He neglected to see Zim coming, and was tackled by the little green Irken and knocked to the roof of the building with a fleshy thud, his metallic legs scraping the concrete. Zim lay there beside him for a second, panting. Whoever it was he hit was breathing heavily, too. Zim lifted his head to look at him. The sporadically twitching metal legs showed that he was stunned. Still a little dizzy himself, Zim got up and stagger-crawled his way to him. He reached down and grabbed him by the oversized hooded sweatshirt, and knelt down to his face, which was still covered by the hood.  
  
"What the hell was that all about?! It doesn't take a genius to figure out NOT to use these things in public. This baggy fabric you're wearing isn't going to make you any less conspicuous, either! You're so stupid, Dib! I oughtta--"  
  
The hood fell back, and Zim gasped in shock. Instead of Dib's oversized glasses, Half-open crimson eyes were blinking at him, set into a green face. "Uhhh..." A female voice uttered. "...Anyone get the number of that cruiser?" 


	5. The New Girl

"In here!" Zim's voice could be heard through the holographic door to his base. It swung open wildly, and Zim stepped into the living room, followed by the mass of clothing he'd met before. Once fully inside, two red hands reached up from the stranger's side and lowered the hood of her sweatshirt. Without saying a word, the female irken looked around the room. Her almond-shaped red eyes fixed onto the green monkey picture above the sofa. "Tasteful." She said.  
  
"Yes, I know." Zim replied, pleased with himself. "You can get rid of your, uh, disguise thing. You don't need it here." He said, pushing the door shut. He pulled off his wig and shook out his antennae, then grabbed his bookbag and took off down the hallway, leaving her standing there.  
  
The female nodded after him, and pulled off the sweatshirt. Underneath, she wore a form-fitting jumpsuit that was dull yellow in color, and had red patch pockets on her thighs and chest. Red gloves covered her arms up to her elbows, and matching boots were on her legs.   
  
"Listen, um, Min, was it?" Zim called from the hallway.  
  
"That's right."  
  
"Listen, Min, I just want to say that I meant no harm to you back there in that alley. I was just trying to keep you from making a very stupid mistake." He returned into the living room without his disguise, ruby eyes reflecting the light from the windows.  
  
Her gracefully curling antennae twitched as she looked at him. She was about two inches taller than he was; still very small, according to Irken standards. Despite her lack of height, however, she had the kind of bearing that made people listen to her. "Oh, really?" She responded.   
  
"Yes. To be out there without a real disguise, and to even think about using your spiderlegs during the day-- You were just begging to be hacked apart by one of those human scientist sporemonkeys!" He pointed up at her to emphasize his point.  
  
Min's eyes narrowed. "I'll have you know that I was doing FINE, up until you saw--" She stopped herself in mid-sentence. "Well, suffice it to say that I had no previous trouble. Besides, the creatures here are too stupid to notice anyway, I've found." She mentioned with a wave of her red claw-like hand.  
  
Zim huffed an amused laugh. "You can say that again!"  
  
"The creatures here are too stupid to--"  
  
Zim's amused snicker formed into a laugh. "No, no! That's just an expression here on Earth! One I've picked up! You don't have to repeat yourself." He said, shaking his head, smiling slightly. Min looked at him, eyes narrowing through the confusion spread thickly across her face. In her distraction, she didn't hear a small shadow creep up behind her with a quiet squeaking sound.  
  
"HI!! Wanna play with my moose?" GIR cried happily, jumping in front of her from out of nowhere and shoving his toy moose in her face with a *squeak!*.  
  
Min yelped and recoiled from the rubber animal, and looked down with confusion at the little robot that was holding it. "...Uh, no..."  
  
"...OK!" Gir yelled. He lowered the pig to his side, and stood there, staring at her blankly for a second. "...I want a freezie!" With that, he took off towards the kitchen. "Freezie! Freezie! Freezie..."  
  
"Put on your disguise, GIR, before you leave!" Zim yelled after him.   
  
"You... have... a SIR unit?" Min said, nervously watching GIR disappear beyond the doorway. Zim looked at her, and shrugged. "That's GIR. He's not your normal SIR unit."  
  
Gir poked his head in through the doorway, half into his dog suit. "I'm advanced!!" He walked past them again, mumbling to himself and zipping up. He stopped to look up at Min. He glanced at Zim, then back at Min again. "Master! She looks like you, and she's pretty!! Are you gonna kiss her??" Gir yelled, pointing up at her.  
  
"GIR!!" Zim barked in surprise. Before he had a chance to say anything else, the demented robot ran out through the front door, giggling madly and pulling up his hood on the way out.  
  
"What a strange little robot." Min commented.  
  
"Wait until the sugar from the brainfreezie hits his circuits. You think he acts strange NOW..." Zim added, watching the door.  
  
"Um, what does 'kiss' mean?"  
  
"Huh?" He said, blinking uneasily. "Oh, it's nothing. A disgusting squishy thing that humans do." Zim waved away the topic, trying to dismiss a sudden feeling of awkwardness that he had no idea where came from. "Uhh, eh, so what exactly are you doing here, anyway? Why this planet?"  
  
Min sat down on the couch, eyes straying to the carpet. "I... I kind of got left behind after my team moved out. I was gathering data for an imperial research project, and something went wrong. I 'm not too sure what. Suddenly, everyone was just gone, and I was stuck here." Zim sat down next to her on the couch. She looked over at him with a blink of her long green eyelashes. "That was... only a few weeks ago, but it felt like an eternity. When you're alone, it always does."  
  
Zim stared back at her. "I know what you mean..." Blinking again under his stare, Min stood up and began pacing. "So, what kind of research were you doing?" Zim pressed, watching her pace.  
  
"...I've been, uh, monitoring signals from the Control Brain. With enough data, I may be able to plot the exact edges of the empire." She stopped and stared into space for a second. "Very important work, y'know?" She added uneasily.  
  
Zim nodded slowly, eyes narrowing in thought. The edge of the Control Brain signals were supposed to the THE edge of the empire. Wandering into the void beyond the threshold of the Control Brain's emanations was considered a fate worse than death. Zim had heard more than his share of horror stories about unfortunate bastards who strayed too far from Devastis, trying to find new territories to conquer, only to literally fall apart on the planet's surface, or implode, or worse. Such stories were always whispered when told, and he actually found himself glad that Min didn't go into any more detail, but he soon regretted her new choice of subject:  
  
"So, what're YOU doing here?" She asked, glancing over at Zim, who fidgeted at the question.   
  
"Uhh, It's a... long story..." Zim stammered. Shouldn't she know about him already? Would she find out? Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to tell her HIS side of the story. He jumped off the couch, and grabbed Min's claw, leading her towards the kitchen. "You're going to find out eventually anyway, so I may as well show you..."  
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Min stood in the control room of Zim's base. "Wow! This place is enormous!" She started to press buttons on the main computer console. "How many chambers does this place actually have?"  
  
"Somewhere around 50 or 60. I never bothered to count." Zim answered, walking up behind her, staring at the computer screen. She was checking out the schematic files of the base. Zim leaned in close to her and pointed at a cluster of chambers. "Those are the labs. That's the containment area. That's all storage, up there. Life support is down there at the bottom level. And we're right here." He finished, pointing to the center chamber.   
  
"Zim?" Min asked, turning her head. Zim was no more than a few inches away. "Can I ask you something?" She blinked her long green eyelashes.  
  
"Hmmm?" Zim said, sounding bored. Her question was interrupted by a flashing red light on the console.  
  
"INTRUDER. INTRUDER." The speakers droned.  
  
"Hang on." Zim said quickly, pressing the flashing button. The computer screen changed, showing Dib standing at the front door. Zim didn't seem surprised. He reached for a microphone that was sitting conveniently within reach. "Come on in, Dib." He spoke into the microphone. The pale teenager at the door looked around, opened it, and stepped in.  
  
"What are you doing?" Min asked, confused and alarmed. "Isn't that one of the Earthanoid creatures? What if he finds his way down here? What if he sees us!?"  
  
Zim stifled a laugh. "I don't think we need to worry too much."  
  
"Hey, Zim! Are you down here?" Min looked up in near-panic at the voice in the elevator shaft, which was quickly whirring to life and carrying the Earthanoid down.  
  
"Yeah, down here! Zim took off down the hallway that led to the elevator shaft. Min could hear their echoing voices over the machinations of the elevator. "I thought you had work to do for skool."  
  
"Yeah, but I finished early. I didn't have any math homework."  
  
"Eh, is that ketchup on your sleeve? You didn't use the refrigerator to get in again, did you?"  
  
"I told you, I'm NOT flushing myself down the toilet!"  
  
"Oh, right." Zim laughed. He rounded the corner into Min's view, a taller bespectacled human quick behind him. Dib froze when he saw the female Irken, staring terrified at him.  
  
"Wha-- Who's that?" Dib pointed at her.  
  
"Uhh, Dib, this is Min. She just... dropped in. Min, this is Dib, a friend of mine."  
  
"A friend??" Min said, exasperated. "It's an Erthanoid!"  
  
"Earth-LING!" Dib corrected. He looked at Zim. "Where did she come from?" Dib pressed, trying to ignore her. Min looked insulted.  
  
"Well, I noticed her on the way home from Skool. I kept having the feeling someone was watching me. That someone turned out to be her. She gave a pretty good chase, too..."  
  
Dib glared at Min, who was staring defiantly at him. "What's she dong here? Did you ever think to ask?"  
  
"I HAPPEN to be stranded here, earthLING! And I'd rather not be bothered with your petty inquiries!" Min replied sharply, cutting Zim's explanation short.   
  
"I even talking to you..." Dib said coldly. Min glared at him, almost growling under her breath.   
  
"Dib, can I talk to you for a second?" Zim grabbed Dib's sleeve and dragged him away from the seething female in the computer room. Dragging him into the tunnel to the elevator, he spun around and clutched the human's shoulders, eyes staring straight into his. "What are you doing?" He said quietly.  
  
"What do you mean, 'What am I doing'? Zim, look at what YOU'RE doing!" Dib wriggled out of Zim's grasp and stepped back. "You met her only a few hours ago, and already she's down here, looking the place over? Doesn't that seem dangerous to you?"  
  
"Nonsense! She doesn't even have a decent disguise! She's perfectly harmless, I'm sure of that!"  
  
"That's exactly what I thought about Tak..." Dib replied, his voice wavering ever so slightly. "...Remember? C'mon, Zim! She tried to run when you saw her, for God's sake! Doesn't that seem shady to you at ALL?"  
  
"...Of course not! She's... only being careful. I'd do the same thing, if I were--" Zim stopped, and sighed in recognition. "If I were in her situation..." He WAS in her situation, he realized. He identified with her, because they were both stranded here. That's why he brought her into his base to begin with. That's why he couldn't just kick her out.  
  
Dib stood there, reading him like a picture book. "Well, your pity for her may cost us. All of us... What if she's lying to you? What if she's--" Zim cut him off with a glare. Don't dare finish that sentence, he seemed to say. Dib swollowed and steeled himself. "I see how it is. Well, enjoy your newfound companionship, Zim. I'm not going to stick around. You'd better keep an eye on her, 'cuz if she pulls anything funny, then she'll have ME to deal with..." Zim's scowl deepened. Dib turned and walked towards the elevator, and Zim watched him all the way up. His expression was like granite. He didin't expect to lose his only friend over this, but he knew better than to think Dib was going to waver. Stupid human. Angrily, he sulked back into the computer room.   
  
"Where's the earth creature?" Min asked irritably, leaning against the computer console, arms crossed.  
  
"He left." Zim said quickly. "So, what did you want to ask me?"  
  
Min stood up, trying to compose herself. "Uh, well, I'm not too used to this place, and I don't know how long I'm going to have to stay here. So... if you don't mind... may I use your base? I just want to look through your computer files and find out exactly what I'm up against." She looked wistfully at the blank computer screen.  
  
"Heh, why not?" Zim replied without really thinking. "It's obvious you're just trying to survive down here, so I suppose you can use the Earth data files in the computer."  
  
Min heaved a deep sigh of relief. "Thank you, Zim. You don't know what this means to me." 


	6. The Tallest, again

"'The new age will begin with Mitosis. Where there was one, there will be two. Where there is two, there will be many.'" Red read from a holographic screen at a huge desk. The tasteful biomechanic archetecture of the tallest's private library was surpassed only by the sight just outside the gigantic picture window: A breathtaking view of the planet Irk and it's three moons. He and Purple would usually be sitting in the control room, viewing through the viewscreen, and munching on something tasty, but instead, and for the past three months they had been staring at computer screens, sans snacks, trying to find out all they could about what the Control Brain had told them that night. His claw was poised above the input plate, twitching ever so slightly as the heat-sensitive input device read his motions as commands. Purple stood behind him, holding his chin in thought. "'The seed will be sown on the day of Mitosis, and the Tallest will carry It. The Tallest will go to the new stead with It, and It will grow there. It will grow from ashes and metal, and the highest of mind. And many will flock to it, and it will protect them. A new age will begin, and a new sphere will be opened.'" Red turned around in his chair and blinked at Purple. "...It's kinda creepy when you see yourself mentioned in scripture..."  
  
"I remember when I first heard that passage." Purple sighed. "I was just a smeet. I thought it was too vague, that it didn't mean anything..." He paused and pointed at the screen. "'The new stead'? That's gotta mean Earth." Purple started to pace behind Red's chair. "Imagine. Earth, the center of a new reach of the Irken empire! Who would've thought? With a second Control Brain stationed there, it'll give us half the galaxy for the taking!" He said happily. He stopped, and looked down at Red again. "You know, I still don't know why you want to keep this a secret. If the empire knew the day of Mitosis was upon us, It'd--"   
  
"It'd be frozen in fear, Pur." Red interrupted. "This is scary stuff we're talking about. This... manuscript talks about more than just the beginning of a new age." Red said dryly. He pointed at one of the paragraphs on the screen. "Look at this. It talks about fighting, possibly a war somewhere." He scrolled down through the text. "A return to some kind of creepy 'hedonistic past', and," He read aloud. "'Betrayal of the highest order.' I don't know what it all means, but it doesn't sound NICE. This is not the kind of thing I'm going to just blurt out to anyone. Not until the Control Brain summons us, and tells us it's ready."  
  
Purple sighed in frustration, kneading the ridges above his eyes. He just didin't get why Red was being so paranoid. He always was better at dealing with people, though, and his argument kind of made sense. "You AT LEAST sent the orders to have an Invader stationed on Earth, right?" He pushed.  
  
"Oh, yeah. She should already be there by now." Red motioned with a wave of his claw. "I did it as quietly as possible, and she knows her mission's top secret. No one else in the galaxy knows where she is except you and me."  
  
Purple blinked. "What about Zim?"  
  
"What about him?"  
  
"He might be a threat."  
  
Red laughed. "Oh, c'mon, Pur! Zim is so clueless that he won't even notice anything's wrong until the Armada drops in on top of him. He probably doesn't even know she's there!"  
  
"Remember what the Conrol Brain said..." Purple mumbled. Red turned and looked up at him irratably. That had become his favorite catch-phrase over the past few months. Purple's arms were crossed, his eyes narrow in thought. "I still want full progress reports every hundred hours. If anything happens, I want us to be the first to know, secrecy or no. This is too important to screw up, Red." With that, he hovered away and out of the library. Red watched him leave, and turned and stared at the text on the screen. Scrolling up and down through the pages, he tried to absentmindedly figure out what was bugging him. His and Purple's "executive disagreements" had gotten more frequent, and he really couldn't blame his co-tallest for all of it. The whole thing--the division of the control brain into two entities, the prose, the scripture, the hype--was getting to him, for some reason. He should have been happy, like Purple, but he had an uncomfortable feeling there was something that he should know that he didn't. It was like there was a missing piece to a puzzle that he just couldn't find, and no one else noticed was gone. And he HATED feeling like that. In irritation, he slapped the input plate and stood up, ready to leave. Maybe some nachos or something would make him feel better, he thought. A musical tone from the screen stopped him, however, and he tuned back. When he hit the plate, he'd accidentally opened an old biology treatise from some fogotten database. Blinking in irritation, he started to close it down, but then read the title: "The Control Brain and It's Contributions to Irken Development."  
  
"Hmm? Control Brain? What's this...?" 


	7. HEY MEATBAG!

Dib yanked his bookbag out of his locker, and slammed it shut. It was the end of a Friday, and all he wanted to do was go home. Taking out a textbook that read "Frustrations in Literature", he zipped up the bag and shouldered it.  
  
The hallways were flooded with the bodies of seventh and eighth graders, forming a raging torrent towards the exit. He sighed, buried his nose in his textbook and plunged into the throng of students, following the crowd to the door. Normally, Zim would be walking next to him, chattering on about the idiocy of he human race or at least flashing a warning glare to any bully or jock that considered them for a source of amusement. But Zim hadn't talked to him since he had left his house a week ago, and Dib hadn't bothered to seek him out. He didn't even look at him in class. True, he'd been a jerk, he admitted to himself as he stared blankly at a chapter of the textbook he wasn't really reading. If he were the only human on a strange planet for a long time and suddenly another human just showed up, he'd be acting the same way. But Dib didn't want to take any chances. Zim showed up three years ago intent on destroying human society. Who was to say that Min wasn't supposed to do the same?  
  
Dib absentmindedly turned the corner in the skool parking lot. Lost in thought and staring at his reading assignment, he wasn't watching where he was going. He only took a couple of steps before he collided with an overloaded blue raspberry freezie, which exploded all over the designer shirt of it's handler: Torgue Smacky, the 200-pound quarterback of the football team. At first preoccupied with his shirt, the jock's overdeveloped muscles twitched in rage as his gaze slowly rose to meet Dib's, eyeing him with the kind of look a predator would flash at it's next meal.  
  
At first speechless with terror, Dib tried to stammer an apology. "I-I'm sorry about that. I--" His words were cut short when the hulk grabbed him by the trenchcoat collar.  
  
"Oh, you're sorry, are ya? Not as sorry as you're gonna be, dweeb..." While up in the air, he noticed two more jocks standing behind him, both with the same kind of look that Torque had. "This shirt cost me 75 bucks, and I'm gonna take every penny outta your ass!" He hissed, violently throwing a stumbling Dib around a corner and following close behind.  
  
The middle skool's layout was a one-story knot of hallways, branching out in odd directions, the thin brick walls forming meandering dead-ends and bare alcoves all though the outside parking lot. These deserted windowless alleys were often used for after-skool fights and daily "lessons" by the more dangerous members of the student body. Dib stumbled around the corner and slammed into the red brick wall, dropping his bookbag and looking up to find himself in one of those dreaded dead-ends. The only way out was through the trio of malicious athletes standing at the entrance.  
  
"Grab him!" Smacky ordered one of his lackeys. On command, the smaller of the two jocks sprinted forward and grabbed Dib's hair, pulling him to his feet. With a sneer into the pale teenager's upturned face, he tossed him to Torque, who promptly buried his fist into Dib's stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Picking him up by the trenchcoat collar and pressing him against the brick wall, he brought his fist back to smash into his face, but was stopped by a shrill voice echoing between the walls.  
  
"HEY, MEATBAG!!"  
  
All three jocks whipped around to see the interloper, who was standing defiantly at the entrance to the alley. Torque smirked, recognizing the little green freak in front of him from health class. Zim pointed dramatically up at them. "Three against one isn't exactly fair. Have you no honor, stinkbeasts?"  
  
Smacky just stared at Zim, halfway between confusion and amusement. Distracted, he didn't notice the oversized literature textbook that Dib had until he bashed him over the head with it. The jock staggered, dropping Dib to the floor and screaming to his cronies to bring him the little green freak's head as well. The pale teenager hit the ground hard and dropped his improvised weapon, which was promptly kicked out of his reach by the other jocks on their way to "educate" Zim. Dib didn't bother to retrieve it, and instead scrambled to his feet and grabbed Smacky, throwing him headfirst into the wall with all his strength. Surprised at his own action, Dib watched the post-pubescent monster stumble again and slump against the wall, out cold.  
  
Near the entrance, one of the jocks lunged forward in an attempt to tackle the Irken. Using his size to his advantage, Zim nimbly dodged and the jock went right past him. Quicker than the human eye, A flash of silver erupted from Zim's pak and bludgeoned his attacker over the head, knocking him against the wall, unconscious. "All too easy." Zim scoffed, turning his head around just in time to connect with the other jock's fist. Zim reeled back, hissing from the pain. His hand went up over his right eye, which was now oozing a bluish-green ichor. His lens had been broken. His attacker just stood there, admiring his handiwork. "...Overgrown meat child!" Zim screamed. "You'll pay for that!"  
  
"Bring it, shortie." The squat football player taunted. Zim growled and screamed at the jock, who had no idea he'd just hurled a mortal insult at him. Zim lunged forward, his claws clenched into fists, not really thinking in his rage. The jock just sidestepped, and allowed Zim to fly past and pound his hand into the brick wall instead. Yelping in pain and withdrawing his hand, Zim backed away, but not fast enough. The jock grabbed his shirt and pulled his light frame to his face, holding him there with a massive fist. "You're gonna regret the day you messed with me, freak!" He growled, towering over Zim. Zim braced himself for another punch, but a familiar white textbook appeared behind the quarterback and knocked him out with one smooth motion. The jock collapsed, tossing Zim down roughly to the ground. Dib stood behind his fallen attacker, clutching his red-stained textbook.  
  
"Are you all right, Zim?" He asked, offering a hand that Zim gratefully took. He didn't look so good, one hand disfigured and cradled under his arm and the other holding his bleeding eye. Dib looked down at his own hand and saw it covered with slippery green liquid.  
  
"Let's get out of here!" Zim hissed under his breath, a slight tinge of worry in his voice. The bleeding from his eye wasn't stopping. Dib nodded and turned to leave, but paused when he noticed a dent in the brick wall, right where Zim had smashed his fist into it. But, there's no way that Zim could've done that!  
  
Was there?  
  
Before Dib could say anything about it, Zim pulled him out of the alley and into the street.  
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Dib kicked opened the front door to Zim's house. In he stumbled, holding up a very pale Zim. He looked awful: The broken lens had chewed up his right eye, and his red shirt was turned an unpleasant brown color from being soaked in his bluish-green blood.   
  
"I need to get down into the lab." Zim mentioned weakly. "I'll be able to fix this."  
  
Dib nodded and started towards an accent table in the corner of the living room, crowned with a gaudy assortment of strange-looking flowers. "Open up!" He yelled, and the table, along with the floor beneath it, began to rise, revealing yet another access port to the lab. "Come on." He said, half-dragging Zim into the elevator with him. On the way down, Dib began to stare out the glasslike tube they were traveling down. The knots of tubes and wires that made up the walls of the base were sickly biological in design. How Zim could draw comfort from someplace like this, he had no idea. Dib's train of thought was derailed when he noticed the weight he was carrying getting heavier. "Zim?" He looked down to find him unconscious. "Zim??"   
  
The elevator door opened, and Dib tried to maneuver his companion over his shoulders so he could carry him, only having partial luck. Dragging him into the knotted hallways, he tried to figure out exactly where to take him. There had to be some medical quarters somewhere, but he didn't know where. Even then, what could he do? He didn't know a thing about irken medicine, he thought despairingly.   
  
"You! What are YOU doing here?!" He looked up from the floor to see Min running up towards him. Halfways there, she stopped in her tracks as she realized what he was carrying. "What the-- Oh, slark! What have you done to him??" She sprinted over to him and gently lifted Zim's head, looking at his eye.  
  
"I didn't do this to him, Min!" Dib replied, his tone halfway between irritation and desperation. "Do you know how to help him?"  
  
"...Come on! I'll help you carry him." She answered, and maneuvered underneath one of Zim's arms. With the two of them carrying him, they made it through the corridors a lot faster. While they were waiting for yet another elevator, Min reached into one of her pockets with her free hand, drew out a small cylinder and bit off the cap, revealing a needle. She plunged it into Zim's arm, and the mechanical syringe hissed quietly as the bluish fluid inside disappeared.  
  
"What are you doing?" Dib asked in confusion.  
  
She pulled the needle from Zim's arm, and capped it again. "It's a stabilizer pack. Repair and blood-forming hormones in a copper nitrate suspension." She tossed the needle to the side. "With that, he can heal just about anything. I was hoping to save it until after I analyzed him and set his hand, but we need it to buy time."  
  
Analyzed him? Dib opened his mouth to ask, but was cut short by the rumbling open of the elevator doors.  
  
The medical room was just as spherical and organic as the rest of the base. It was a small chamber with a single bed built into the wall, which glowed white under it's own volition. A company of tall chests stood beside it. Bottles of green sterilizing fluid lined the counter on the other side. The circular door dilated, and Dib and Min walked through, carrying the still-unconscious Zim.  
  
"...and then I looked at the wall, and there was a big dent where he'd hit it! I don't know what it means. Do you think he could have hit it that hard? Maybe it has something to do with those growth spurts and stuff..." Dib babbled, finishing up his recollection of the fight at skool.  
  
Min let go of him, and hustled to the counter, pulling off her gloves and opening the seal on one of the bottles on the counter. "Get him onto the bed!" She said, as though she hadn't really been listening.  
  
Dib mumbled something under his breath and picked Zim up, placing him on the glowing white slab. Min poured the contents of the bottle over her hands, letting it run off into a sink in the counter. She tossed the bottle back onto the counter, and began sifting through drawers and cabinets, grabbing bags, bottles, syringes, tweezers, scalpels...  
  
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Dib asked, watching her buzz around the room. She glared at him, dropping everything onto a surgical table and pushing it over to the cot. Her expression softened when she looked down at Zim. As Dib looked on, she lightly placed her hands on Zim's chest, one on top of the other. A thin metal arm reached out from her pak, and positioned itself over Zim's forehead. At the tip of the arm was an acrylic sphere that was completely clear. She closed her eyes, and the sphere began to glow green. Quickly, the arm swayed over his eyes, where the orb flashed red. Min winced. Then the orb floated just above his broken hand, where it flashed red a second time. It then retreated back into her pak. Min opened her eyes, her face concerned. She grabbed a pair of scissors and tossed them to Dib. "I need your help. Cut off that glove on his hand." She said, pointing at Zim's broken hand and pulling off the other glove. "And be careful. It's fractured in three places."   
  
Blinking in confusion, Dib lookd down at Zim. He's gonna be pissed, Dib thought absentmindedly as he started cutting off the glove, trying not to get squeamish at the sight of Zim's gnarled hand. Three fingers or five, it didn't matter. They still didn't look right broken.  
  
On the other arm, Min was drawing patina-colored fluid from his wrist. Her movements were crisp, practiced, even professional. Taking the needle off and setting the syringe aside, she turned and grabbed a bag of similar liquid from the table, ran a transfusion into Zim's arm. Grabbing the syringe again, she dropped it into a strange black box-shaped device on the table. It beeped, and she picked it up. By this time, Dib was finished, and she walked around, opened the box, and clamped it down onto Zim's broken hand, before Dib could see what was inside. It beeped again, and began a weird humming sound. Zim winced.   
  
"I know. It hurts." Min said soothingly, stroking his antenna lightly. "I'm sorry, Zim." She looked up at Dib, meeting his confused look. The softness melted from her face, and she cleared her throat. "It's resetting his hand. It'll also make his bones knit in a couple of hours, as opposed to a couple of weeks." She replied quickly. She reached over and grabbed the pair of tweezers, looking at his eye. "Maybe you'd better wait outside, Dib..." She said, glancing up at him. "Or better yet, just go home and get some rest. I'll contact you when he comes to. He'll be fine, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to see this..."  
  
Dib nodded. He'd be back here later, he figured. "...How do you know how to do all this?" Dib asked, trying desperately to get one question out before he left.  
  
"...It's what I do." Was her reply. Dib sighed and resignfully started towards the door, turning back just as it dilated.  
  
"...I'm sorry for the way I acted. You know, last time. Tell Zim I'm sorry, too. I guess we really CAN trust you, after all." Dib said, backing out through the portal.   
  
Min glanced at him, smiling, her red eyes gleaming in the light. "I'm glad you think that, Dib." 


	8. Lonliness on Planet Earth

Dib stood in front of his bathroom mirror, pulling down the collar of his blue shirt. Green and brown bruises were just starting to form on his shoulders. Grunting, he let go of his shirt, and stared at himself in the mirror. He was lucky those jocks didn't hit his glasses. Hell, he was lucky he was left with just a couple of bruises. Zim hadn't been so lucky. With a dull thump, Dib rested his head against the mirror, and he heaved a sigh. He would've been the one bloodied up, if Zim hadn't shown up when he did. Even after the way he had acted to both him and Min, Zim still stepped into that alley. The least Dib could do to repay him was to give Min a chance, even if it did bother him.  
  
He lifted his head from the mirror, and blinked again at his reflection. Lifting up a few errant strands of hair, he noticed a slender line of blemishes starting to form along his hairline. Acne. Great. Welcome to adulthood, Dib. Well, it was barely noticeable for now. He just hoped it wouldn't get any worse. It was hard enough being a designated loser at skool, he didn't need a pizza face as well.  
  
"Hey, Dib! You know what they say about guys who spend too much time in the bathroom..." Gaz's muffled voice fought it's way though the closed bathroom door, accompanied by the bleeping and blooping of her GameSlave.  
  
"Ha, ha. Very funny." Dib answered, turning from the mirror and opening the bathroom door. His sister was there, staring down at her game screen. She glanced up at him for a millisecond.  
  
"What's wrong with your face?"  
  
"Nothing." Dib replied quickly, rubbing his forehead self-consciously. Gaz raised an eyebrow conspicuously, then returned to her game. "Whatever..." She said, pushing her brother aside and slamming the bathroom door in his face.  
  
"Nothing's wrong with me!" Dib insisted.  
  
"You're such a dork, Dib." His sister mumbled flatly though the door.  
  
"Yeah, yeah." Dib droned. Like he hadn't heard THAT before.  
  
Dib wandered into his room, and closed the door behind him. His laptop was still running, but he disregarded it. The Swollen Eyeball Network probably had already sent him a million encoded e-mails since that morning, but he had gotten lax in keeping up with the daily posts. Big surprise, when the supernatural is staring you in the face every day. He flopped down onto his bed, his arm dangling over the side, and fingered the NNY comic book lying on the floor. He sighed. "Hey, Mimi, are you in here?"  
  
A flash of black heralded her as the metallic black cat with red eyes zipped up onto the tip of his foot bedpost. She stared at Dib for a few seconds. "WHERE WAS DIB HUMAN?" She said, her voice sounding like a freshly stuck tuning fork.  
  
"Oh, I was over at Zim's." He said, rolling over and staring up at the ceiling. "...We got into a fight on the way home from skool. Zim was pretty badly beaten up, too..."  
  
"IS ZIM STILL OPERATIONAL?"  
  
Dib smirked. "Yeah, he's all right. Thanks to Min." His smile faded, and he continued to stare at the ceiling. He heaved a sigh. "Well, it looks like she's gonna be sticking around here for a while. She's already been helping Zim with his research, from what he told me on the way home from skool."   
  
Mimi blinked and cocked her head to the side. "…IS DIB HUMAN ALL RIGHT?" She asked, catching Dib off guard.   
  
"What? Oh, yeah. I'm just… I dunno… Tired of being alone. No one at skool will even give like me a second look. The "weirdo" thing is starting to get on my nerves. Zim has Min, now. You know what I mean? Even he gets someone!!" Dib was suprised at the sudden anger in his voice. He blinked as he realized what exactly was bothering him. "...That just leaves me. I'm guess I'm just… Lonely..." He glanced down at the little robot on his bedpost and half-smiled. "I'm glad I was able to piece you back together from the parts I found inside Tak's ship. At least you aren't gonna run off with a tom somewhere."  
  
"…DIB HUMAN. THE ODDS OF AN IRKEN FINDING ZIM ON EARTH IS 2,167,492 TO 1. THE ODDS OF ZIM FINDING COMPANIONSHIP WITH SAID IRKEN ARE MUCH STEEPER..."  
  
"...What does that have to do with anything?"  
  
"DIB HUMAN HAS BETTER ODDS. WAIT."   
  
Dib sat up and blinked at the little robot. His lips slowly curled into a warm smile. "Thanks, Mimi." He scratched his chin in thought, his smile sharpening into a confident smirk. "Hey... Can you do me a favor? Use the laptop and patch into Zim's system files. There's gotta be a lifeforce monitoring program or something in there that Min's using on Zim. If you find one, can you plug into it, and let me know if anything happens to him?"  
  
Mimi blinked at him. "YES, MASTER." She quickly zipped over to Dib's laptop and sat down next to it, her tail curling gracefully behind it and clicking as it plugged into a data port. It's a good thing Zim doesn't know about her, Dib thought. No one did. For six months, he'd worked by himself, trying to piece together the shattered remains of the SIR unit, when he wasn't at skool or hanging out with Zim. Yeah, it wasn't easy, and at one point his room was starting to look more like his dad's lab, but he kind of enjoyed the challenge. Mostly, he just wanted to see if he could do it, if he was smart enough to figure her out. But, a small part of him seemed to be happy just to possess her, and not as a tool or weapon or computer. Something personal. Something he had to keep to himself. A reminder, maybe. Who knows.  
  
"I know this is sneaky, but it's not technically spying. I'm just making sure Zim's all right..." He hopped off his bed and started towards the door. "I'm going after a soda. Let me know if anything happens, okay?"  
  
"DIB HUMAN IS CLEVER." Mimi melodiously said, her slitted eyes bending in a simulated smile. "DIB HUMAN REMINDS ME OF TAK."  
  
Dib stopped at the door. "--What did you say?" 


	9. What's the Matter With Zim?

The hallway was endless. On either side, it seemed to stretch out forever. Unframed mirrors lined the walls on either side, loaning an eerie kind of symmetry to the doorless passageway. "You're turning into one of them..." The echo bounced down the mirrored hallway like Zim's reflection. Shaken, he whirled around, finding nothing but himself staring back.  
  
"Eh, what is this? Who's talking? Who are you?"  
  
"You're turning into a human." The voice echoed again.  
  
"What?? NO! Nonsense! There's no way I can turn into a human stinkmonkey! I am Irken, and I always will be!!" Zim shouted. The echoes sent back down the endless glass hallway. There was no sound but Zim's quickened breath for what seemed like an eternity.  
  
The voice responded, much nearer now. Once again, Zim whirled around, only to meet his reflection. "You aren't an irken anymore. You're changing. You're mutating. You're something else. You're not an Irken anymore."   
  
"No, I am ZIM!" His trademark battle cry that he hadn't used in three years had a twinge of fear hidden inside. "Zim the irken! Nothing can take that away from me! Nothing will turn me into one of those slimy fidgeting HUMANS! NOTHING!! Who dares to say otherwise? Show yourself!"  
  
The voice answered, this time, in an uncomfortable whisper that seemed to be just behind him. "Are you sure you even want to BE an irken anymore? What does being an irken mean to you, anyway? The Empire doesn't want you. No irken can even stand your presence anymore. That's why you were banished, remember?"  
  
"...I may be outside the empire, I may end up changing into a hideous mutant, but I'm still an Irken, dammit!" His uncertain words echoed down the glass hallways, bouncing off of unframed mirrors. Only one phrase managed to reverberate back: "Outside the empire..." Over and over the echo hammered against his antennae. Rolling the words over in his mind, slow threads of panic started to creep into his mind. "No. I didin't mean that! I'd be dead right now if I were outside the bounderies of the empire! That can't be why I'm--" He turned around again, to face another mirror. Instead of his true reflection, he saw himself, with hair. And pupils. And ears. And human fleshtones. It was him, as a human. His panicked look met the knowing smirk of his sapien counterpart, and Zim propelled himself against the opposite wall. "Holy prak!"  
  
As he watched the mirror, the smile on his human self dissapeared, and was replaced with a look of agony, as his limbs fell off and it's skin started to melt...  
  
  
  
Zim sat bolt upright, still screaming from the dream. After a few seconds of labored breathing, he reached up and clutched his head from a headache that had conveniently decided to show up, and layed back down on the glowing white slab. He blinked under the harsh overhead lights, and blurry shapes slowly formed into the cabinets and equipment of the medical ward. A series of repeating beeps drifted from a speaker above the glowing cot he was laying on. Absentmindedly rubbing his eyes, he wondered where he was, then how he got there, then how long he'd been out. His wits finally returning, he realized the eye he was rubbing was healed, as was the hand he was rubbing it with. He stared at his hand, his antennae falling backward in thought. Did Dib do this? Did he even know how to use the equipment in here?  
  
Where was that human, anyway? Zim propped himself up on the cot and stared at the circular door to the hallway. Was he alright? Did he leave for home already? Did he and Min finally manage to kill one another while he was out?  
  
Min, he realized. Maybe she was the one that used the stuff in here to repair him. Yeah, that made sense. More sense than Dib, anyway. That human was smart, but not THAT smart. He flexed his hand again. She did a pretty good job, too. He should find her and express his gratitude, he thought grudingly. He jumped off the cot, causing the beeping noise from the lifeforce monitor to stop. Zim shook his head and staggered, sitting back down and blinking from dizzyness. Maybe he'd better stay here for a while, he thought as he looked down at the tiled floor. At least until the room stopped spinning.  
  
His eyes still to the floor, he noticed that the front of his sweatshirt had been turned almost completely brown by the color mixture of turquoise blood and red fabric. Reaching a green hand up to feel the stiffness of the fabric, he noticed that his gloves were missing. It didin't take him long to spot one glove next to him on the surgical table, with a pile of same-color fabric shreds next to it. His other glove, probably. He sighed irritably and looked back down at his shirt. Well, it was getting too small for him anyway, he thought, releasing his utility pak and pulling the bloody thing off over his head. He reattached his pak and unceremoniusly tossed the sweatshirt to the head of the cot.  
  
"Computer? Warm up the matter fabricator. I need to get some decent clothes."  
  
A holographic computer screen flashed in front of him, showing the matter fabricator main menu. "Specify search criteria..." The speakers sighed disdainfully.  
  
"I don't know! Just find something normal-looking!" Zim yelled at the screen. Immediately, pics of "normal human clothes" flashed on the screen."No, no, no! Unacceptable! What the prak is "Aeropostale", anyway? Show me something else!"  
  
"I'M SEARCHING, alright?" The speakers whined.  
  
Zim sifted though the choices, using the holographic touch screen, until he eventually found something that caught his eye. When asked for a size, he just told the scomputer to scan him again. He had no idea what size he was supposed to be, and even if he did, that would change again by next week, it seemed.  
  
As the articles of clothing were being formed, Zim opened up his height experiment files again. Stupid dreams, he thought absentmindedly, watching the irken numerals scroll down the screen. This wasn't the first time he'd been scared awake, either. Irkens normally only needed one-third the sleep humans did, but recently he'd been operating at a constant state of near-exhaustion, because of the nightmares. To compensate, he'd adopted a normal human sleep schedule, but that only made things worse. It was just one more way he had to lose his Irken identity.   
  
Zim glared in frustration at the figures on the screen. This entire week, he'd spent in the lab, partially to get his mind off of what happened between him and Dib, and partially because Min was down here. He sighed and relaxed a little, remembering how she had been more than happy to help with his experiments. Even when he told her about the bizarre changes his small green form was going through, she showed no sign of it bothering her. In fact, she became all the more helpful, doing whatever she could to help him figure things out. He leaned back on the cot, a smile begining to appear on his lips. Kind of strange, he thought, that the lithe green creature he had careened into last Friday would become his main pillar of support in such a short time. Zim blinked out of his reverie and scowled, realizing how he was just staring off into space. Again. He'd been doing it a lot, recently. Besides, even with Min's help, they'd made no progress towards figuring out what exactly was wrong with him. On the contrary, he seemed even healthier than normal: his height, strength, and stamina were at all time highs. But, what did it all mean? What exactly was happening to him?  
  
"MASTER!!" Gir squealed, jumping down from his hiding spot in the ceiling and landing on Zim's stomach. Zim, gasping for air, grabbed the robot by the antenna and held him off the bed, it's legs dangling. "Ooooh! You look different!" The deranged SIR unit cooed.  
  
Between labored breaths, Zim managed to get out "GIR, Why did you do that?"   
"I wanted to suprise youuuuu!!"  
  
"Yeah, well, you suprised me." Zim said blandly, rubbing his stomach.   
"What're you staring at so hard?"  
  
"Nothing." Zim replied quickly, glancing up at the holoscreen. "I was merely reviewing some data, that's all!" He dropped the squirming metal thing over the side of the cot, and he heard GIR hit the floor with a metallic thud. "The articles of clothing I'm having fabricated should be done soon. Go and retrieve them for me, GIR."  
  
"Yes, my master!!" He heard GIR shout from under the cot, and the little robot sped out through the circular door, giggling creepily.  
  
Zim watched him leave, it slowly dawned on him that three weeks ago, he wouldn't have been able to pick up GIR with one arm. But now he was just holding him in the air like he was some kind of toy. Looking down at the arm he picked him up with, he stared as wiry muscles he'd hadn't noticed before shifted under his skin. By human standards, it wouldn't have been very impressive, but he was an irken, and to an irken, it looked freakish. Looking up, he saw himself sitting in the reflection of the polished metal surface of he cabinets. Blinking in amazement and uncertainty, he slowly stood up from the cot, looking at his double in the polished metal. He had tried not to look at himself recently. He had himself scanned, analyzed samples and data, but he didn't actually LOOK, because he didin't want to see what kind of freakish thing he was turning into. This was the first time in three weeks he'd taken a good look at himself, and GIR wasn't kidding when he said he looked different. He was easily as tall as Dib, now, and his body proportions had changed dramatically. The wiry muscles on his forearm were covering his body. He narrowed one red eye and studied himself. If it weren't for the green skin, he would've looked almost...  
  
Human...  
  
Zim lurched back from his reflection and pressed himself against the cot behind him. "Holy slorbees! I AM turning into a human!!" He screeched, scrambling across the cot and falling over the other side with a fleshy thud and an tirade of curses in irken.  
  
"Turning into a human? You've got to be kidding, right?" Min laughed from the open door. She stood there, leaning up against the circular doorway, holding a pile of black cloth in one hand. "You know, Zim, the idea of being in the medical ward is NOT to hurt yourself..."  
  
Zim's head popped up from behind the cot. He hadn't heard her come in. "You'd do the same thing, Min, if you just saw what I saw! What in the great holy blorch rat happened to me while I was out? I look like... uh... like..."  
  
Min sighed. "Listen, Zim. The only thing I gave you while I was repairing you was a stabilizer pack. My guess is what your body didn't use of it to heal itself, it probably used to finish... whatever it is you're going through." She tossed the handful of black cloth onto the cot. "Here. I think these belong to you. I found your SIR unit wearing the shirt on his head and playing jump-rope with the pants."  
  
Zim stood up from behind the cot, and picked up the simple black t-shirt he'd chosen. Why black? He didn't know. He just thought it looked interesting. "...Thanks, Min." He said slowly, like it pained him. "And, thanks for repairing me..." Tossing the shirt over his bare shoulder, she looked back up at Min, who was still watching him from the doorway. Her fiery crimson eyes seemed to be studying him intently, blinking now and again behind those long eyelashes of hers. "...What?" He said finally, trying to suppress that uncomfortable feeling of awkwardness again. What was the matter with him? Why couldn't he keep his composure around her? And why did he feel so hot all of a sudden?  
  
"N-nothing." Min replied quickly, suddenly finding the tiled floor very interesting. Her face was a bright shade of green. Was she blushing? "I'd better, um, go run some more data." She pushed off the doorway and took a step down the hall.  
  
"Hey, wait." Zim heard himself say. Min stopped in the hallway, turning back. He maneuvered around the cot and started towards her, intent on asking her why she was staring at him like that. However, his foot caught on one of the legs of the cot, and he stumbled clumsily through the doorway, crashing into her and propelling the both of them into the hallway...  
  
"Whoa! Watch your step. You're still a little weak..." She warned, trying to keep him steady. Cursing under his breath at his clumsiness, Zim looked up, finding himself almost at eye level with the irken female. His arms around her, his red eyes seeing his own reflection in hers, Zim just stood there, dumbfounded, trying to comprehend a sudden feeling of wanting that he'd never felt before, and didn't quite understand. He was speechless. Surprisingly, so was she.   
  
"Zim!! Zim, where are you?!" Dib, however, was very vocal. When Zim had first jumped off the medical table, the life monitor signals Mimi was scanning in his room had gone flatline. In a half-panic, Dib ran out and grabbed the fastest thing in his dad's lab in order to get there quickly, which happened to be the experimental hoverjet board that hadn't REALLY been tested yet. Using this perfectly secure piece of equipment, Dib hauled ass to Zim's base, fearing the worst and thoroughly convinced that Min was to blame. The fact that he happened to skid around the last corner at just the right moment to see a shirtless Zim holding his caretaker in a rather close embrace was just one of those twists of fate that manage to make things like sitcoms and soap operas look that much more probable.  
  
"Zi-- Whoa. Uhh, Zim?" Dib mumbled, stopping in his tracks. Both irkens simultaneously looked up, noticed the confused human, and split apart as though they were allergic to each other. "Uh, I was, eheh, just... Did I come at a bad time?" Dib said awkwardly.  
  
"No." Both Zim and Min replied immediately, without thinking. Min started to back away towards the communications chamber. "I guess I'd better get that data ran, like I said I would. Zim, you look, uhh...definitely strong enough to move around, so..." Still backing away, her eyes on Zim, she bumped into the metallic walls of the hallway. Turning to see what she ran into, she looked back, a brightening green tint starting up again under her eyes. "Just don't strain yourself, alright?" With that, she disappeared down the hallway.  
  
After watching her disappear, Dib glanced at Zim. One eyebrow arched over his oversized optical rims, and his lips curved into a knowing smile. "And I thought you just sympathized with her. I am so dense!"  
  
"Aw, what are you talking about?" Zim mumbled, disappearing back into the medical quarters again, and, signaling to give him a minute, dilated the door behind him.  
  
Dib leaned against the door. "Hey, I may have glasses, but I'm not blind. I saw you out here with her."  
  
"I tripped. She caught me." Zim's voice resounded though the metal door.  
  
"Uh huh, sure. Admit it, Zim, you have the hots for her! That's why you've been letting her stay here!"  
  
"'The hots?' What is that, some kind of earth disease?"  
  
"C'mon... Don't play dumb, Zim. I think you already know what I'm talking about."  
  
Silence. Then, "...yeah. I know what you're talking about. The stupid human meatsacks on TV won't shut up about it. How wouldn't I know?"  
  
"And I'm right, right? Then why don't you just march in there and tell her how you feel?"  
  
"...Dib, you're a human. You think about things the way humans do. I know what you're talking about, only because I've been here for three irkenpraking years. I've managed to turn into a freakish mockery of an irken, too. I'm starting to sound, act and even LOOK like a HUMAN! That includes 'the hots', as you so colorfully put it. She's just a normal irken, though. She thinks differently. She wouldn't understand. This kind of thing just isn't what Irkens do..."  
  
At a loss for words, Dib uneasily fiddled with his glasses. Wasn't what irkens did? What on earth did he mean by that? Oh, yeah. They use cloning to reproduce. They wouldn't know romance if it bit their antennae off.  
  
"...Listen, you're not a freak, Zim. You're just--" Hearing a beeping noise on the other side, Dib stepped back as the door dilated. Zim stood there, wearing the black t-shirt, size-larger black jeans, and leather fighting gloves--black, of course. His face was impassive as Dib stared at him, suddenly realizing how he'd changed. "Hey! Wow, what happened to you? You DO look like a human! You know, except for the green skin and the red eyes and the antennae, but otherwise..."  
  
"Dib..." Zim cut him off. "I really don't want to hear this right now."  
  
"Sorry. So, what do you wanna do, then?"  
  
Zim thought for a second. "I just came out of the medical ward, so I shouldn't strain myself too much... I need something to get my mind off of things..."  
  
Dib blinked. "...Laser tag?"  
  
"Laser tag." Zim nodded in agreement, smiling. Together, they took off towards the arena. "That way, I can beat you senseless without even breaking a sweat!" 


	10. The Tallest, AGAIN!

The green-filled capsules seemed to go on forever. The dimmed light in the smeeting chambers made the rows of incubators seem to stretch on into the darkness in every direction. Each row of capsules was suspended from gleaming twisted black metal frames like ripening fruits on a vine. But this was no ordinary vineyard. Each capsule contained in it's fizzy liquid interior, a developing irken fetus. As Red stared out into space, he noticed a robot arm snatch one of the ripe capsules from the black vines, and practically freefall into the shadows towards the hatching platform. Leaning over the rail of the floating transport platform, he watched the metal appendage disappear into the darkness.   
  
"Watch your step, sir. It's a long way down." The tech piloting the transport cautioned. She turned and glanced at what had caught her lord's attention, the scant light reflecting off a pair of low-light goggles. Her antennae twitched in realization. "Oh, well, it's funny you would notice that one. We've been monitoring that pod for some time now. It's been showing signs."  
  
"'Signs?'"  
  
Instead of explaining, she leaned onto the transport controls, and she and Red steadied themselves as the platform came to life again. It lowered down to the floor of the chamber, and sped across the white metal surface at breakneck speed.  
  
"Permission to speak, sir?"  
  
"Granted." Red replied from his uneasy seat in the back of the platform. He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a bag of snack chips, and started munching loudly on them.   
  
"Sir, where is Almighty Tallest Purple? Wasn't he supposed to accompany you?"   
  
"He's preoccupied with other matters concerning the empire, smeet tech." Red replied irritably through a mouthful of chips. "Now let's hurry up and get this over with."  
  
"Yes, sir." Her reply was hard, and Red noticed a twinge of antipathy in her voice that made him stop chewing. What had he done to her to make her sound like that?  
  
As they neared the hatching platform, the transport platform slowed to a crawl. The hatching platform was nothing more than a large metal basin, lined with black padding to prevent injuring the smeet. As the tech and Red jumped off the transport platform, the robot arm that had plucked the incubator from it's vine whizzed overhead, and stopped over he basin, slowly lowering itself until the capsule was only a foot from the rubbery surface. As Red hovered up the sides of the basin, the clear upper hemisphere of the platform emerged from the sides and closed over it with a hissing sound, forming a sphere of black metal and glass. The tech followed him, and looked down into the basin though the glass.  
  
"This one would've been a diplomat. He even had an empathic thread." The tech pulled up her goggles and glanced up at Red, blinking violet eyes. "Like you."  
  
"...I don't see what the problem is here, smeet tech. You called upon the Tallests for a REASON, right?" Red said. He was right. Nothing LOOKED wrong. But there was something strangely... mournful... about the tech's behavior. She glanced sadly around her and beckoned with a red-gloved hand. Quickly and quietly, she and Red were joined on the rim of the smeeting platform by a company of steel-faced irkens in tech uniforms.  
  
He turned to ask, but the tech just pointed at the capsule in the dome, which was now being broken. The smeet's limp body slid from the tube and hit the rubbery surface in a pool of green fluid. It stayed motionless as another arm appeared and affixed a life-support pak to it's back. A shock of electricity surged through the little green creature, and it lurched onto it's side, it's eyes glassy.  
  
The tech just stood, staring at the smeet. An uneasy silence had filled the area.  
  
Then, the smeet blinked. It lurched one, and rolled over.  
  
"See? There's nothing wrong--" Red started to reassure the tech, but she was still staring at the smeet in the dome. Her eyes were full of pain.  
  
"Look closer, my liege."  
  
Blinking and looking back though the dome, he saw the smeet sit up. The tiny irken's head hung limply at the neck, like it had been broken. It's eyes were still glassy, and it's jaw was misaligned. As it struggled to stand, it's knee wrenched in the wrong direction, pulled out of alignment by a malformed muscle. The smeet screamed, and fell to it's side, landing in the pool of green fluid it was once suspended in.  
  
"What the prak?? What's wrong with him?" Red asked, glued to the sight in morbid confusion.  
  
"We wish we knew..." The tech replied, her voice low and shaking. Sullen, she reached around behind her and pulled the cover off a large red button on a podium-sized control panel. Her limp hand depressed the button, and an orange gas rushed into the dome. The smeet screamed again, and started coughing.  
  
Red didn't stop staring at the dome until the coughing stopped. "How many of these have there been?" Was all he could choke out.  
  
The tech turned and looked at him, blinking back thick glycerine-based tears. "Every smeet in the past two weeks. It seems like all the pods are showing signs now, and we don't know what's wrong! Even the logicians can't figure anything out..."  
  
Red looked at her. She was about ready to break down, he realized. For two weeks, all she had done was destroy smeets. She was the only one authorized to do such a thing, and it was taking it's toll on her. "I'll have the chambers closed for a few days. That way, I can consult with my co-tallest, and maybe we can figure something out..."  
  
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded drained, but Red was sure she was thankful. He turned and hovered back towards the platform, not hearing the tech say. "Irk help us; It's actually happening. Minari may have been right, after all..."  
  
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"Purple?"  
  
Purple whipped around from the data screen he had been staring at for the past half an hour. "I was wondering if you were going to make it." The media room was small, and dim, with little furniture save for the ruined irkenomic task chair and battered media console. It looked to be the complete antithesis of the lavish personal library that they had used last time. The dull violet glow from Purple's power armor played along the dingy walls, stuggling with the glowing text on the screen for supremacy as the main sorce of light in the room. This was an information lockdown chamber; the grey walls seemed to be stained from the text that had reflected off of it over the years. Information that didn't want to be known, shouldn't be known, but was found out anyway. The only sounds in the room now were the rumbling of an air duct in the ceiling and the humming of Red's hoverskirt. Red stood there in the doorway to the media room, sucking on a raspberry cooler. He hovered in, the door sliding shut behind him with a dull hiss.  
  
"So, what was wrong with the smeeting chamber?" Purple continued, almost at a whisper.  
  
"That's just it. They don't know what's wrong. We've got about 80 dead smeets down there, each one defective." Purple's jaw dropped. "That's every one in the past two weeks. I even saw them destroy another one while I was there." Red stopped and shook his head. He didn't want to remember that. "If they knew what was wrong, they would've fixed it by now."  
  
"Did you order the camber deactivated?" Purple asked quickly.  
  
"For three days. I have no idea what else to do. All the logicians in the Empire can't figure it out."  
  
"Then we'll just have to keep it deactivated, until we figure out what's wrong..." Purple leaned back in his chair, his antennae falling backward, running a spindly green claw over his violet eyes. "3000 years of smooth operation, and the smeeting chamber had to mess up NOW?"  
  
Red stared at the walls of the tiny media room. The red glow from his armor, along with Purple's, cast an uneasy flickering shade of magenta on the walls. The light from the monitor was completely drowned out. "...So, what about you?"  
  
"I cut the meeting with the theology techs short. They're starting to suspect something. They weren't telling me anything I hadn't already read, anyway. The in's and out's of the ceremony, how the seed's going to be carried, what's going to happen on Earth. Blah, blah, blah. So I came here, trying to find something new. So far, nothing."  
  
Red's eyes narrowed. Should he tell him about he strange treatise he'd discovered in the library? He hadn't before. It was too stupid-sounding at the time. Made no sense to him. But now that everything else had been researched, with only a few actual FACTS between them, they were starting to get desperate. "Hey, Purple, I've been reading a set of biology treatises in the library. Maybe you should--"  
  
"Biology treatises!? Red, are you actually READING those? Those papers were written by a crackpot smeet tech that had too much time on her hands and no real contact with the Control Brain!" Red narrowed an eye at him, his antennae twitching irritably. "Don't look so suprised. I read those so-called "Devastis Factor" papers in a crazy-people studies class at the Acadamy. The author was a case study. A real nutjob. What was her name? Minari? Went as far as to say that the Control Brain was keeping us weak by keeping us short, or something like that." Purple chuckled slightly.  
  
Red leaned on the desk, looking down at Purple, still slightly annoyed at being shot down. "You remember what they said happend to her?"  
  
"She was reprogrammed a long time ago."  
  
Red sighed in frustration, standing up and slurping his cooler again. Reprogrammed. She may as well be dead, he thought to himself. Oh, she was still around somewhere, but she was a completely different irken now. No memories of her past life. Not a clue as to what she was before. There were no records to research, either. The Control Brain itself handled all reprogrammings, and gave no records. The better to seperate them from their old lives. "Can you just open the file and read it again? If you're right, I'll agree with you, say she's crazy, and then we can go eat food."  
  
Purple sighed. "Alright." He held his claw over the control plate, and searched for the papers. It took a painfully long time, the white noise from the airduct offering little comfort. Studying the humming sound, Red noticed a wierd hissing noise accompanying it. It was coming from Purple's respirator. Purple blinked, his face starting to pale a bit, beads of sweat starting to run down his face.   
  
"Pur? Are you all right?"  
  
Pulling a shaking claw away from the control plate, he leaned back in his chair, and shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. "Yeah... I'm just fine..." He said, quickly standing up. His resperator stopped hissing. "Why don't you take a look at that file instead. I've been here so long, I'm getting dizzy. I'm going back to the bridge. See you there." Purple said everything in one breath, backing out of the room like he expected a slaughering rat creature to leap out from behind Red and tear his windpipe out. He leaned against the doorway for a second, still unsteady, and turned down the hallway before Red could reply. The light from his armor once again fighting against the light from the text on the screen. This time, it was losing.  
  
"What was the matter with him?" 


	11. The Devastis Factor

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Min took a step, her metallic spiderlegs sweeping around her and stabbing at the air in front of her in one lightning-quick motion. She paused and steadily exhaled as the exhaust fan overhead cast a dark shadow on her. She took another step on the riveted floor, her face stiff with concentration, as the metallic legs again swept and lanced at nothing. Every movement was calculated, smooth, practiced.  
  
It was good that Zim and the human weren't around. They left a while ago to go do Irk knows what on the surface, which was fine with her. That way, she had the arena to herself, and she didn't really feel like trying to explain away how she knew Irken military hand-to-hand exercises. And, she was going to go crazy down here if she didn't find something else to do besides research...  
  
She crouched down and, using her back spiderlegs, leapt into the air. Flipping once in a flurry of silver metal, she stabbed menacingly on the ground, driving both needle-sharp tips of her front spiderlegs into the floor, into a space about the size of an irken torso. The entire chamber shook with the reverberating clanging sound. Pulling her metal legs out, she stared blankly at the dent she'd made in the metal floor. Immediately, she thought of Zim and what Dib had said about the skool fight. Oh, slark, she thought, lowering herself back to the ground. It was happening to her, too. Choking back her concern, she began the exercise again, this time more forcefully, trying to keep her mind clear. The tips of her spiderlegs whistled though the air as they moved, snapping into each jab like a cracking whip. Best not tell anyone, she thought warily.   
  
Going through the repetitive motions, her thoughts strayed to the incident in the medical ward. She had tried to play it cool around the human, to play it down as though all irkens knew how to tend wounds like that. The truth was, she actually had no idea what she was doing in that medical room. What was worse, if she had made one mistake, Zim would've bled to death, or would've been blinded, or slark knew what. Not that it should've bothered her. One less objective for her to complete. But, when she looked at him, saw his helplessness, something inside her was wrenched, and a voice in the darkened corners of her mind seemed to scream out, telling her what to do. It was as though she'd done it thousands of times before, and just didn't remember it. To make things worse, she actually LIKED taking care of him. What was wrong with her?  
  
Her spine bending backwards, she bent into a bridge as her spiderlegs swept along the ground in half-circles, splitting the air with the sound of a rippling steel cable.   
  
"It's what I do?" Why did she say that to Dib? As long as she could remember, she was nothing else but a soldier. She wasn't a biologist, or physician, or smeet tech. If she were, she wouldn't be there right now, following orders she wished she didn't have to follow.   
  
The metal legs caged around her protectively, and she jumped back to her feet as they exploded into a set of perfectly timed high and low slashes that tornadoed around her body.  
She was getting tired of the facade. Tired of acting meek and harmless. Tired of pretending to be a victim. Hell, the entire mission was torturing her. She just wanted to end it. At least NORAMAL irken soldiers had a code of honor to adhere to. No one had bothered to tell her it was different, now that she was an elite. She was practically being ordered to play on the trust of another Irken. To deceive him. To steal information from him. And, eventually, to kill him.   
  
The whirlwind of metal stopped, and her spiderlegs retreated back into her pak. Min stood there, panting slightly, watching the fan cast shadows around her. She swallowed hard; she had actually made herself sick with disgust. But, she had her orders, she thought sullenly. What could she do? Tell them no? Possibly. Her conscience would be clear, she could even get to know Zim the way she really wanted to, but she'd be dead to the rest of the Empire. There was no coming back from refusing an Invader's mission. She took some heavy steps to the curved wall, and leaned against it, sliding down and curling up against it on the floor.   
  
A tree. That was the first thing she had seen when she landed on that planet. If you wanted to call it a landing. There really wasn't much left of her cruiser afterwards. A glitch in the landing program was responsible for that. A hell of a way for an Invader to start off a mission, she thought bitterly. When she stumbled, coughing and cursing, out from the wreckage, she saw it; the first earth creature she'd ever seen. Huge clouds of green, yellow and red leaves billowing in the night wind, lashed to the ground only by a hard brown stem. She stared at it for what seemed like forever. It was beautiful, and what made it even more beautiful was the fact that it was actually a living thing. Right then, she had started to have doubts about her mission, and her doubts only grew as she explored. Humans, animals, trees, streets, cities... Where any other Invader would view them with haughty contempt, she looked on with amazement. Was it possible to fall in love with a planet? She'd had held herself up in Zim's underground base for the past 350 hours because she didn't want to see what she had been ordered to destroy. She sighed in disgust and stared up at the silhouetted exhaust fan in the ceiling. Why did they even need this planet, anyway? It was so far from the rest of the Empire... and far away from the Control Brain...  
  
Her thoughts were shattered as an image flashed into her mind. Her own struggling wrist being lashed down to the arm of a metallic chair. She could feel the coldness of metal behind her and the pressure of multiple hands holding her down against the chair. She screamed in protest. It seemed almost too real. Her head lurched backward hitting the arena wall with a dizzying impact.  
  
"...Irken growth is monitored by the Control brain. It's signals, extending far out into space, control and limit Irken development within the bounds of the empire." An eerie whispering voice began to drift past her ears.  
  
Without warning, the visions continued. Her other arm was lashed down. Then her ankles. Then her neck. She was struggling futily in the chair, pleading with the invisible forces to stop. Min pressed herself against the arena wall, groping along the sides, her eyes wide with confusion and fear.  
  
"If an irken were to be taken outside Control Brain space, the effects of the signal would eventually wear off, anywhere from three months to five years later... This includes any mental conditioning or physical restraints..."  
  
In a blur of motion, the hands were gone, leaving her panicked and alone. Her small green frame strained against the steely restraints even as they began to cut deep into her skin. Glassy-eyed and hyperventilating, Min collapsed to her side on the arena floor, still lurching against the wall, trying to back away from the scene in her mind. She stuggled, screamed and pleaded for them not to leave her alone... with It...  
  
"If the control brain is sentient, then a whole new factor must be introduced to the equation. A factor that includes the separate, and possibly dangerous, motives of the Control Brain itself..."  
  
Green haze. A whip-like tendril floating towards her. Her brain burning. Writhing. Screaming. Not being able to stop it. As everything around her faded to black, Min realized dully that she was the one that had been whispering:  
  
"The Devastis Factor..."  
  
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It was nighttime when Dib and Zim returned to his house. They'd been out mallratting, which was Dib's term for standing around the local commercial center and laughing at the hideously dense human consumers as they hustled by. At first Zim found the idea disgusting, but eventually admitted that just watching the poor deluded stinkbeasts WAS kind of entertaining. That, and it took his mind off of Min for a while. "You heading home, huh?"   
  
"Yeah, It's pretty late, and I still have homework to do." Dib said, glancing up and down the street. Zim blinked and narrowed an eye behind his lenses. He'd been doing that the entire way back. "What's the matter?"  
  
"Uh, nothing. I just have this weird feeling someone's watching us." He suddenly yawned wide and shook his head. "Maybe I'm just tired."  
  
"Pitiful humans, can't stay awake longer than 18 hours." Like HE had room to talk. Zim smirked, starting up his front walk, past the security lawn gnomes. "Go get some sleep. You look like you've been though hell and training pits." Zim hadn't started splicing Irken and English until a year after his exile. It just kind of happened; he started slipping from one phrase to the other, sometimes in the same sentence. This Irkenglish slang was no mystery to Dib, who was used to it by now. Dib waved and started towards his own house, and Zim closed the door behind him. "GIR!"  
  
"MASTER!" The insane robot poked his head out from under the couch cushions, where he had been perfectly hidden. He held an open jar of peanut butter in his robotic paw, and was messily scooping out giant gobs of it, swallowing them in single gulps. Zim cringed, suddenly thankful he hadn't flopped down on the couch like he intended to.  
  
"Gir, where is Min?"  
  
"Mmmph!" Gir said through a stringy gob of peanut goo. He buried his face into a throw pillow to wipe it from his lips, then looked back up and happily chirped "She's sleeping!"  
  
"Sleeping?"  
  
"In the zappy power thingy. She was doing like--" And Gir broke into a clumsy martial-arts-type kata still holding the jar of peanut butter. "And then she was like-- EEEAAAAAGGGHHH!!" Gir screamed at the top of his lungs, mouth wide open and flailing his stubby arms. Zim held down his wig, trying to cover his antennae, and scowled that the little exhibitionist robot. "And then she was like--" The blue glow in his eyes faded to black, and the deranged metal thing fell limply onto the throw pillow, peanut butter splattering everywhere.  
  
Zim let go of his wig. "You heard her screaming? I-Is she all right? Tell me! Gir! GIR!!" No answer. Gir had actually shut himself down to prove his point. Zim knew better than to take anything Gir said seriously, but the thought of anything happening to Min made his squeedily-spooch tighten. Stupid human emotions, impairing his judgement again. She was probably fine. All the same, it wouldn't hurt to check...  
  
"Min!" Zim's voice echoed around the arena walls. The droning of the electrode in the ceiling was his only response. The circulating shadows from the fan played along the walls and seemed to blur the outlines of things. His red eyes squinted against the shadows: he'd taken off his disguise on the way down into the lab. Stepping though the hatch, he glanced around the arena. His eyes found the outline of a slender green figure slumped against the back wall. "MIN!" Zim sprinted across the metallic floor and knealt next to her, lifting her head and shoulders with one arm. Min's body was limp, draped over his arm. Her head rolled dumbly to the side, and she let out a pained sigh. She was alive, she was just unconscious. Without really thinking about it, Zim gathered her into his arms and stood up. Just a few weeks ago, he wouldn't have been able to do that, light though she was. He would've had to run out and find a transport or something else that could carry her. But this didn't occur to Zim now. All he was concerned about was getting Min to the medical ward.  
  
"Computer! Full medical scan! NOW!" Zim screamed, laying Min carefully onto the glowing cot-like bed. The beeping of the life monitor started up almost immediately.   
  
"Awww. I don't wanna..." The speakers whined.  
  
"DO IT, INFERNAL MACHINE, or you shall face digital doom like never before!" Zim growled threateningly.  
  
"Alright, alright..." The laser line shot out again, this time sweeping the cot, with Min on it. A holoscreen popped up beside Zim. "Physical status: No detected afflictions or injuries." The voice on the speakers droned. "Mental status: Psychological trauma. Subject is in a state of severe mental shock."  
  
"Mental shock? What did this to her!?"  
  
"Insufficient Data." The speakers mumbled.  
  
Zim growled. "Then tell me what I have to do to get her out of it!"  
  
"Subject might respond to mild shock-inducing stimuli. Commonly called 'snapping them out of it.' Something as simple as hearing a familiar voice may be enough, but it depends on the case. Otherwise, subject will remain unconscious indefinitely."  
  
Zim looked down at her. "Min..." Her slender frame didn't move. He leaned over the glowing white cot, his face close to hers. "Can you hear me?" Not even a twitch of her antennae. Ruby eyes pleading, Zim reached up and stroked the side of her face. "If I ever figure out what did this to you..." His eyes led upward to the holoscreen. "Computer, use the new psychic interface technology and scan her memory. Maybe I can find something useful that way."  
  
"Unable. Behavior patterns have been altered. Engineered mental block present. Unable to circumvent."  
  
An engineered mental block? Why would anything want to block her memory? He looked back down at the irken female, trying to puzzle it out. Nothing actually happened to her in the arena, or the computer would've told him. So what scared her so much? And what kind of memory was being blocked? Maybe that WAS what terrified her. A memory of something that happened to her in the past.  
  
Tentatively, Zim reached down and grasped her hand, bringing it up and holding it against his chest. Her long slender fingers curled around his. Looking down and studying it, he blinked as he noticed a thick ring of dark green skin around her wrist. Scar tissue. Something sharp had sawed into her skin, but it was long healed. He looked and saw her other wrist had it too. Two sharp cuffs, around her wrists. Restraining cuffs? "Oh, God." Zim said dumbly, realizing what that meant. He'd been right. Someone did something to her a long time ago, and against her will. Hence, the restraining cuffs. But, what could have been so terrible that the MEMORY of it would leave her like this? He could think of some things, and his organs twisted at the thought of them. At the thought of them happening to HER. He reached down and lifted Min's limp shoulders from the cot, wrapping his arms around her and holding her, not really caring anymore what it meant. Humanity or Irkenity be damned. "Min... I..." He wanted to say that he wished this hadn't happened to her. He wanted to command her to come back. To yell, to scream, to threaten like he would have years ago. But, no words came. Words wouldn't work; she wouldn't be able to hear them anyway. But what else could he do? Laying her gently back down onto the cot, he stopped inches from her face, and did the only other thing he could think of. His hands clasping her shoulders, he pressed his own lips against hers. His eyes, at first open, slid shut, and his antennae fell backward. Disgusting and squishy? Hardly. Hell, he'd wanted to do this for slark knew how long, he just never admitted it to himself. His kiss deepened, Zim's lips capturing more of hers. His hands ran down her arms, and Zim had to consciously stop them from going anywhere else, leaning on the cot with them instead. This was torture, he thought, his hands gripping the sides of the cot. Slowly pulling his mouth away from hers, he looked sadly at her. If only she were awake...  
  
"Uhhhh..."  
  
She mumbled and stirred. Zim's eyes widened. "Min? Min!" He placed a hand on her shoulder again, and Min jerked at the touch, sending Zim back in surprise. Her eyelids blinked open, and the ruby orbs underneith wandered up to meet his.  
  
"...Zim?" She said softly. "Where am I? What happened?"  
  
"You're in the medical ward. I found you in the arena, on the floor, and brought you here. I guess I managed to, uhh, snap you out of your stupor." He grinned stupidly. A mild shock, indeed!  
  
Min sat up on the glowing white slab and looked at him, confused. "What stupor? I was in the arena one minute, and... Wait, I remember blacking out, but... Why did I?" She blinked in confusion, reached up numbly and rubbed the back of her head, flinching as she touched where it had hit the arena wall. "OW! Oooo, maybe that's why. I've gotten so clumsy lately--"  
  
Zim glanced at the marks on her wrists, his smile fading. "Yeah. That's right. You must've hit your head." He mumbled. Maybe it was better she didn't remember anything about it. Irk only knew what would happen to her if he reminded her...  
  
"Zim?" Zim looked back up, into her eyes. "Umm, thanks, Zim. Thanks for helping me."  
  
"No need to thank me. It was the least I could do after you healed me..." Zim said warmly. Min was the first to break the gaze, staring at the floor instead. Those last words seemed to hurt her, somehow. "...Did I say something wrong?"  
  
"No, it's just... Why do you have to be so nice?" She said sadly. Zim wasn't sure what to say to that. Min sat up at the edge of the cot and stood up slowly only a few feet from him. "I'll be all right now. I just need to walk it off."  
  
"Just don't strain yourself..." Zim said, a smirk starting to form on his lips. The reference to their encounter in the hallway was not lost on Min, who glanced at him and blinked, bright green filling her face again. Now why did he have to bring THAT up? She'd tried to drown out that instant under reams of data, as well as the strange feelings that came along with it. What was wrong with her? She'd never acted that way when she touched another irken before. 'Course, Zim wasn't a normal irken, either...  
  
"Hm, what's wrong with your face?" Zim said, reaching down and cupping her burning cheek. She jolted backward at his touch.  
  
"Uhh, nothing. I'm just, eheh, just going to go out and walk this off like I said I would. If you need me for anything, I'll be in the communications chamber." She said, sidestepping out of the room, her eyes still on Zim. Before she disappeared around the corner, she stopped. "By the way, y-you look good in black..." She chattered quickly, and was gone.  
  
Zim stood there, dumbfounded. Why was she avoiding him? Maybe she just didn't like him, he thought, frustrated. Maybe he'd already managed to freak her out with his human tendencies. Maybe Dib said something to her. He better not, he thought bitterly. He looked good in black? Why would she avoid him, and say that in the same breath? He heaved a frustrated sigh and started towards the door himself. Whatever it was, something was making her act strange. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Prak, it was hard to tell what HE was thinking, half the time. Stupid human emotions did that to him. He froze in the doorway at that thought. Min. Maybe she...   
  
He shook his head. "Heh. Wishful thinking, Zim." 


	12. The Hideous Return of Tak

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The haze of some forgotten dream cleared up quickly, leaving a darkened bedroom behind. Out of habit, Dib reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his glasses, and shoved them onto his face. He glared at the alarm clock: Three thirty-six in the morning, it read. He blinked, sat up and looked around the shadow-enveloped room. What had woken him up? The moonlight streamed in through the square window above his bed, reflecting off his pale chest and glasses and casting a tile of light on the carpet in the center of the room. His own silhouette fidgeted in the moonlit square, catching his attention for a millisecond, before he realized irritably what it was. Other than that, there was nothing around him but still shadows. Even the hallway was silent, he noticed through the open door to his room. He tossed his glasses back onto the nightstand and turned and buried his head in his pillow, not bothering pulling the blanket back up over the waist of his blue shorts, trying to focus on worming his way back into a REM cycle. Strange. He always was a light sleeper, but he never woke up unless something stirred him. Even if it was Gaz opening her bedroom door from across the hall, he could still hear it...  
  
Hmn. His bedroom door...  
  
Didn't he close his bedroom door behind him?  
  
He pulled himself out of his pillow, and stared at the open bedroom door. Something about the way it creaked quietly and swung slowly under it's own weight worried him. He reached up for his glasses again, but jerked violently when something claw-like clamped down on his outstretched wrist, holding it to the mattress. He tried to yank it back reflexively, moving just so to dodge something invisible as it pierced the pillow and tossed up feathers with the sound of a silenced gunshot. Dib watched wide-eyed as the feathers settled, panic suddenly overtaking him. He squirmed, wrenching his pinned-down arm painfully, and flailed his legs, throwing the covers off and kicking at absolutely nothing. He was surprised when his flailing feet actually made contact with something. The invisible claw tore itself from his wrist and a ripple appeared in the air above him, lurching backwards into the moonlight from the impact. The white light from the window glanced off of the rippling shape in eerie translucent highlights before it disappeared again. A hard female voice hissed in pain. "Stupid human!"   
  
Dib scrambled against the back wall, now very much awake and staring into the darkness, his heart pounding. "That, that voice..."  
  
Dib was cut off in mid-sentence by a heavy blow to the side of his face, making him land on his side. The claw clamped down again, this time on his neck, holding Dib against the shredded pillow. Dib gasped for air, squirming violently under the force. "I told you I'd be back, Dib..." The sharp voice whispered in his ear. Dib's eyes widened as he realized who the voice belonged to. "...Three years in an unstable orbit around this miserable planet, and I finally get a chance to exact my revenge. Your father has quite the lab downstairs, I see. Everything a girl needs to steal Zim's base out from under him. I'm taking the lab, and, oh, your father too. He'll make an even better figurehead than that weenie guy. And as for you, I think I can figure a way to take over your body, so Zim won't get suspicious. I just have to get inside that swollen head of yours..."  
  
"I... don't think so...Tak..." Dib croaked. Tak's claw relaxed ever so slightly, probably in surprise and amusement at Dib's defiance. But this was all the chance the teenage human needed. "MIMI! ATTACK!" He screamed, and before the invisible irken could move, the gunmetal feline was on her, scratching and piercing with numerous robotic appendages, making her invisibility flicker with each rake. Tak screamed, her static-filled silhouette writhing, trying to dislodge the violent cat-bot from her body. Good thing he'd deactivated Mimi's missiles and lasers, Dib thought, slinking off the bed and grabbing his specs again, still trying to regain his breath. There'd be nothing left of the bedroom now if he hadn't.  
  
Tak finally ripped the modified SIR unit away from her, holding it at arm's length. Mimi had stopped moving and just dangled there, apparently floating above the floor. The catlike robot stared at the floor pitifully, a dimmed light in her red glowing eyes showing her to be offline. Oh, shit, Dib thought, noticing the lifelessness in her eyes. Tak somehow managed to deactivate her. "You thought you could stop me with my own SIR? And I thought you were smarter than the rest of 'em. I know this robot better than you ever--Huh?"   
  
Mimi's eyes pulsed a bright red. Her glare shot upwards, and Dib had to shield his eyes from the flash as a red beam shot from her eyes, making contact with the side of Tak's skull in a satisfying mini-explosion. Pieces of metal flew across the room and scattered on Dib's bed. Tak's invisibility blinked off immediately, showing the same blue-haired human disguise she'd used before. She dropped the SIR unit in her hand and grabbed her temple, screaming in pain. Mimi hit the ground and zipped in front of Dib, hissing like the slow escape of a steam vent, still hell-bent on protecting him. Tak's other arm flying to her head, she stumbled backward into the light. "My... amplifier..." She sunk to her knees and doubled over, shaking. Falling dumbly to her side, she convulsed twice, and then lay still, framed in the moonlit square on the ground.  
  
"Will you turn that damn thing off?" Gaz's screaming voice drifted in from down the hallway. She obviously thought the struggle and scream was part of one of those late-night horror/sci-fi flicks that Dib had the habit of watching.  
  
"Uhhh, Yeah, Gaz! Okay!" Dib yelled back, still staring at the motionless Tak, curled up on the floor. Mimi's hissing stopped, and the little black catbot stopped, walked over and nudged her former master, her secondary programming taking over. Dib stood there for what seemed like forever, staring at the motionless lump in the moonlight, hardly blinking, for fear that she wouldn't be there when he opened his eyes again. When he got up the courage, he started slowly towards her.  
  
"TAK WILL NOT WAKE, MASTER." Mimi chimed, turning towards Dib, the moonlight gleaming off of her. "THE CIRCUIT ON HER PSYCHIC AMPLIFIER HAS BEEN BROKEN. SHE WILL REMAIN LIKE THIS UNTIL IT IS COMPLETED AGAIN." Dib nodded warily, and knelt down beside Mimi. Tak was laying on her side, her face turned from Dib and partially covered in her hair. Trying to get a pulse was gonna be impossible, he thought grumpily. He held out his hand against her mouth. She was still breathing. At first hesitant, he grasped her shoulder and pulled her onto her back. Her head turned towards him, and Dib's hand jerked away at the sight of her face. Her skin flickered from peach-white to green along the left side of her head, circling the burn marks and scratches from Mimi. The thick metal wire that ran across her temple had been smashed and broken off, leaving a pair of jagged metal ends with sickly glowing green-blue tips. They sparked once, causing Dib to jump, and Tak heaved in pain.  
  
"You really tore her up, didn't you Mimi?" Dib mumbled, still keeping his distance from the sparks, glancing at the little robot. Mimi sat there, staring sullenly at Tak. "...I'm sorry, Mimi. I know she was your master. But she was trying to hurt me. I'm your master now, not her."  
  
"DIB IS MASTER." Mimi droned. She looked up at Dib, her red eyes blinking. "WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH TAK?"  
  
"Good question." He said, sitting on the bed. "If I turn her in, then I'll be a hero. They'll know I was right about irkens all along! But..." He trailed off, staring at the helpless irken and her former SIR unit. "Even if they DO believe me, which ISN'T gonna happen, they'll start to hunt for others, putting Zim in danger. ...And Min." He pondered this. Shaking the idea from his head, he stood up off the bed and started grabbing his clothes. "...I can't do it, Mimi." This got Mimi's attention, and she looked up and seemed to smile at him, arching her eyes again. "Maybe I AM going crazy, but I just can't." That was the problem with being human. The moral code wasn't exactly the simplest in the universe, and could sometimes be downright self-destructive. Tak may have tried to kill him, but he wasn't going to stoop to her level and just hand her over to be sliced up by the Swollen Eyeballs. Besides, he thought as he glanced down at the comatose Tak on the floor. If memory served, Zim had a score to settle with her...  
  
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"Forget it, Zim!" Min's voice could be heard echoing through the halls and tunnels of Zim's base. She was giggling as though he had just told an incredibly funny joke. Her voice seemed to bounce down the hall past Dib, dissapearing in echoes behind him.  
  
Dib mumbled under his breath and continued to haul towards the communications chamber the female irken that had attacked him in his own room earlier that night. Still in her human disguise, Tak's limp body was now draped heavily over one of his shoulders, and he held her legs against his chest for support. Fortunately, she wasn't very heavy, even if she was taller than him. Nevertheless, he wasn't exactly happy about having to carry her all the way here from his house in the middle of the night.  
  
"C'mon!" Zim's voice echoed down the hall after Min's.  
  
"No."  
  
"Try it just this once, Min. It's not like it's going to hurt..."   
  
Dib stopped. "Whua?"  
  
"I'm NOT doing that, Zim! It's stupid! It's rediculous! Not to mention really goofy-looking!"  
  
Dib snickered.  
  
"Goofy-looking!? What are you talking about? It's perfect! You'll blend in like a chamelion-rat in the sewers of planet Dirt! It' just a wig and a couple of lenses, like mine, but no human will ever be able to tell you're not one of them! This disguise is so simple, it's perfect! And perfect in it's... uh... simpleness..."  
  
Silence. Dib grunted. A disguise? THAT was what they were talking about? Irritably, he shifted Tak's weight on his shoulder, and continued towards the source of the voices. Meanwhile, in the communications room...  
  
"You can't stay down here forever!" Zim added, leaning back against a work table. The second floor of the communications chamber was nothing more than a wide catwalk that ran in a circle along the domed celieng. Shelves, cabinets and benches were huddled all along the outside wall, holding strange-looking tools and mounds of spare parts, most of which were pretty much useless now and covered in dust. The occasional metal workbench was placed the middle of the walk, giving industrious Invaders some place to work on new communications hardware or, in Zim's case, giving him something to lean against. The guard rail that seperated both him and Min from the hole in the center of the circle, and the 15-foot drop to the first floor, was broken only once to allow access to the elevator, a simple glowing white platform suspended in the air, barely big enough for one person to stand on.  
  
He held two green-irised lenses and a long black wig in one hand. Across from him, Min sat on another workbench, her slender legs dangling off the side.  
  
"Sure I can! Please don't ask me to go up there again, Zim. I don't want to see any more of this planet than I have to. I just don't, okay?" Before, she had been giggling. But now her tone sounded more like a plea than anything else.  
  
Zim narrowed an eye and studied her as she sat on the workbench, fidgeting and staring at the floor. She seemed almost ashamed to look at him. He narrowed his eyes, trying to piece things together. "...Wait a minute.... I think I see what's going on here."  
  
"What?" Min looked up at him, fear starting to darken her face. "Y-you do?"  
  
"Yeah. You're worried that the alien mindset of this planet's filthy inhabitants are going to drive you insane. Heh, heh." He sounded very much amused at the astuteness of his observation. Min quietly exhaled the breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Fear not, Min. Madness is not on these creatures' agendas. Stupidity, yes, oblivion, hopefully, but not madness! True, they may think and act... a little strange... but superior minds like ours can easily descipher any HUMAN'S motives." He paused, staring off into space and absently tapping one of Min's lenses against the side of the table. "...It just takes a little observation... on OUR part." He tried not to stress the OUR too much, but he couldn't really help it. Not that she understood the connotation of the word, anyway. She still looked... worried? Confused? Saddened? He couldn't tell what, but something was still wrong with her. If he had guessed correctly back there in the medical room, than Slark only knew what was on her mind now. Leaving her disguise sitting on the workbench, he watched himself approach the Irken female, take her hands into his, and lean down to look into her suprised crimson eyes. "...If you're worried about the humans finding you out, then don't be. Like you said, they're too stupid to notice most of the time. Besides, you'd have me with you..." He said, giving her hands a gentle squeeze. "They'd have to get through me first." He said, allowing some cockiness to seep into his voice.   
  
For the longest time, all she did was stare at him, the same look of conflict on her face. That was it. Conflict. "...Zim? C-can I ask you something?"  
  
"Yeah?" He answered, drawing even closer, their faces only inches apart. She was opening her mouth to ask, when--  
  
"ZIM! Are you in here?" Dib walked into the communications chamber, still dragging the blue-haired girl. Both Zim's and Min's antennae twitched. Min gave a scowl of frustration, and Zim just turned around and leaned over the guard rail. "God, you're getting heavy." Dib mumbled to his deadweight companion. "Hey, Zim!" He looked around the chamber, not bothering to look upwards, unable to see either Zim and Min on the top floor. Zim, however, could see him just fine though the hole in the celing. "Eergh! Where is that little green--"  
  
"Hey! I resent that!" Zim said jokingly. "Remember that I'm not so little anymore, stinkmonkey! What are you doing here at... this... hour..." His voice trailed off when he noticed what Dib was carrying. "...What the prak?? Dib, that's not--"  
  
"--Tak." Dib finished his sentence. "Yes it is. Apparently, she found her way out of orbit. She followed me to my house. I had a great time trying to fight her off when she attacked me, too." He added sarcastically.  
  
Zim suddenly grabbed ahold of the guard rail and sprung over it, landing softly on his feet in front of Dib some 15 feet below. Above him, he heard Min squeak and saw her lean over the rail. Dib eyed Zim in disbelief. When Zim was only four-foot-nothing, that same maneuver would have ended very badly for him. "That was pretty cool, Zim. Since when have you been able to do that?" Dib asked.   
  
Zim gave a quick smile. "Not very long. I'm beginning to find I can do a lot of things I couldn't before." Zim's smile faded and his eyes narrowed into slits of contempt as he eyed the miserable blue-haired creature on Dib's shoulder. "Is she dead?"  
  
"Knocked out. Is there anywhere I can put--"  
  
"You mean she's not dead yet??" Zim pressed. "You're bringing a dangerous creature like her into MY base? Without making sure she's dead??"  
  
Dib heavily laid Tak down onto the metal floor. Her short hair spread out on the floor in a bluish halo around her head, and the slitted skirt of her purple striped dress fell in folds around her legs. "...Well, yeah..." He answered. The broken metal coil running along Tak's flickering temple sparked again, and Dib gasped and jumped back on his feet away from it. He stared at the disguised irken for a second, a look of pity ALMOST reaching his face before he shook it away and started to stretch out the sore muscles in his back and shoulders. "It would have been a shorter trip, but I had to take the alleys and backstreets. I did NOT feel like having to explain to anyone why I was dragging an unconcious girl through the streets of the city at 4 o'clock in the morning."  
  
Zim's eye twitched. "...what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Lack of sleep really did have an effect on humans, he thought irritably. It made them stupid. Before Dib could explain further, he shoved the human out of the way and looked down at where Tak lay on the ground. "Fine then. If you're not gonna do it..." A metal arm extended from his pak, and Zim grabbed a sinister-looking metal object attached to the end. With inhuman quickness, he pointed the blaster down against Tak's temple, holding the grip sideways. Dib's eyes widened as he saw the power resivoir on the gun charge with a red haze and a high-pitched hum. "Sayanara, Tak." Zim hissed.  
  
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"What the--" *BLAM!* *KEEESH!* *SHHHHH!*  
  
It was hard to tell which one was more surprised at what happened. Min had hit the floor as soon as Zim pulled out the ion pistol, surprised that Zim would just take his blaster out and shoot at someone at point-blank range in an enclosed space. Zim was more surprised than she was because he'd managed to MISS the wretched female at a distance of two inches. Dib, however, had to have been the lucky winner because he was the one who MADE Zim miss by grabbing the gun at the last second. Instead of finding it's mark, the red ion blast had rocketed into a video screen, leaving nothing of it but a few shards of glass panel speckled with black and white static.   
  
Dib still had his hand on the barrel of the blaster, which tingled with the residual energy of the shot. It didn't do anything to help the rush of adrenaline he was riding that made the second for him that night. "...No, Zim." Dib said, his voice shaky. "I-I won't let you kill her, either."  
  
"What?? WHY??" Zim yelled. He dramatically pulled the gun from Dib's grip.   
  
"...I don't know! Call it a hyperactive conscience! I just don't want anyone to die over this! Not unless I can help it."  
  
"Didn't want anyone to--Then WHY did you bring her here?" Zim yelled back. "Dib, you already knew I was going to do this! I told you a long time ago that if I ever saw Tak again, there wouldn't even be enough left for you to dissect. And I meant that. She made an enemy when she tried to take over my mission, and the rivalry between two irken enemies runs stronger than most human social ties. It's almost held sacred near the center of the Empire, and it wouldn't be over 'till one of us destroys the other. I HAVE to do this, Dib. I wouldn't be an irken if I didn't. If you didn't want anyone's hands to get dirty to begin with, why didn't you just hand her over to your father or something? He's a scientist-type human, isn't he? If you had only handed her over to him, this planet of yours would be a whole lot safer, you'd probably get the fame you desire so much, and I wouldn't have to look at her face ever again!"  
  
"Yeah, and it'll let every human out there know what to look for when they're looking for aliens." Dib retorted caustically, pressing a finger into Zim's chest. "You think I haven't thought about it already? If my dad finds out about what happened tonight, he'll ship both her AND me off to be experimented on, her because of what she is, and me because I was in contact with her. And I know that once those government scientist guys find out what she really looks like, they'll find the fact that I'm best friends with the world's only green-skinned freshman very interesting..." His explanation did sound pretty harsh. It almost sounded like a threat, he realized. But he wasn't too interested in sounding pleasant at that point. "It wouldn't turn out any different if I left her at Nasaplace or at the Swollen Eyeball society headquarters. Now, where else could I go?"  
  
Zim opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again, when he realized what Dib was saying. Dib backed off slightly, satisfied he got his point across. "Besides, Zim, without that 'psychic amplifier' piece on the side of her head, there isn't much she can do except lay here." He added, gesturing to the unresponsive blue-haired girl on the floor.   
  
"And how are you so sure about that, Dib?" Zim said incredulously, crossing his arms and narrowing his reflective red eyes. The metal cat robot that saved Dib's life somehow figured this to be a good time to introduce herself by zipping out of the shadows and up onto Zim's shoulder in one shiny black blur. Zim was already a little high-strung from Tak's presence, and he yelped and lurched away in a knee-jerk reaction that caused Mimi to lose her balance and forced her to zip back down to the floor. But she never made it there. In a green blur of inhuman speed, Zim's hand caught the SIR unit in midair and held her swinging by her tail, kicking small black legs in the air. "You!!" Zim growled, recognizing the cat as Tak's old SIR unit. The same SIR unit that nearly sent him through the wall of a skyscraper a few years ago. Still snarling, he latched onto her head with his other hand, intent on ripping the little robot apart.  
  
"WAIT! NO, ZIM!" Dib screamed, darting over and grabbing the robot out of his claws. Zim stood there, at first surprised, then dumbfounded.  
  
"What ARE you doing?? You really HAVE gone insane, haven't you? That thing is Tak's--"  
  
"This THING doesn't belong to Tak anymore." Dib interrupted, his arms caged protectively around the SIR unit. Mimi just sat there innocently, her glowing red eyes wandering around the room. "She hasn't for a while. I've had her for at least six months now, ever since I rebuilt her from the remains I found in Tak's cruiser." Mimi gave up looking the room over, squirmed out of Dib's arms and trotted up to his shoulder, where she sat and stared quietly at Zim, head tilting to one side. "Remember how I told you the ship was unsalvageable, just a pile of scrap metal? Well, I lied. There was one thing that was salvageable: Her." Dib reached up and gave a gentle indicatory poke to the metal catbot sitting on his shoulder. She shifted slightly and curved her eyes in a smile, seemingly happy to be the center of attention. "Heck, if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have managed to beat Tak tonight. She saved my life, Zim."  
  
Zim just stood there, disbelieving. "And WHY didn't you tell me about her before?"  
  
Dib shrugged a shoulder, keeping the other steady for Mimi to perch on. "I dunno."  
  
"DIB HUMAN." Mimi chimed next to his ear. "IS THAT THE IRKEN, MIN, YOU TOLD ME ABOUT?" Dib glanced at her and followed her gaze to Min, who was on one of the many circular lifts in the base, just landing on the floor a few yards from them.  
  
"'Dib Human?'" Zim mumbled blankly, and snickered. "You couldn't even program her to call you 'master', Dib?" He teased.  
  
"What if I didn't WANT her to call me that, huh?" Dib slipped a mock warning glare at Zim, giving the slightest of smiles, thankful for Zim's change in tone. He nodded towards the cat on his shoulder. "Yeah, Mimi. That's Min."   
  
"What's going on??" Min asked, approaching the other two. She looked down at the girl on the floor, eyeing her suspiciously. "...What is that thing? Why were you shooting at it, Zim?"  
  
"Don't let the disguise fool you, Min!" Zim skidded between her and Tak, waving bombastically. "Beneath that hideous earth-stink exterior lies the most dangerous creature in the galaxy! Oooh, the pain she put me through! So much pain, Min! She's ruthless! She's--"  
  
Min pushed past Zim and looked down at the scratched, beaten-up disguised irken on the floor. "She doesn't look all that dangerous to ME. What exactly happened to her, anyway?"  
  
"We did." Dib said, pointing at himself and to the SIR unit on his shoulder.   
  
Min's eyes strayed up to Dib, and settled on his metal companion. "...Another SIR unit? How the prak did YOU get one??" Dib started to explain, but--  
  
"HEY!!" Zim yelled over the conversation. Human, irken and SIR all turned towards him. "I'm still waiting for a good reason not to spatter her brainmeats all over the floor, you know..." He continued, pointing dramatically at Tak, who was still lying motionless on the floor.  
  
"Uhh..." Dib mumbled. Zim had some thousand-year-old social creed backing him up. Not only that, he somehow considered this a test of his irkenhood, from what he could tell. There Zim stood in his human clothes, one eye narrowed in impatience, clutching the blaster in one claw with the other shoved into the pocket of his jeans. A strangely human-looking stance, Dib noticed. No wonder he wanted to keep petty customs like that alive. It may be the only thing irken that he could still call his own. Dib could tell that had been driving him crazy. He'd been losing his irken-ness ever since he was marooned here...  
  
Stranded here...  
  
"...Hey, Zim." Dib started, his eyes lighting up. "You know what she was REALLY after when she attacked me tonight? She wanted to use the stuff at MY house to get into YOUR base so she could get off this planet and back to Irk, or whatever it's called. Do you realize what that means, Zim?" He leaned in and pointed down at her. "She's stranded here, too. She's alone, forgotten, on a strange planet, with NO WAY HOME. So, I figure the only thing worse than KILLING her..." He paused, smiling deviously. "...would be to SPARE her."  
  
Zim looked quizzically at Dib, then down at Tak, then up at Dib again. An evil smile spread slowly across his face. "...You're right. I failed to think about it in that way. She's created her own prison here! Now she can rot in it." A metallic arm extended from Zim's pak, grabbed the blaster pistol out of his hand, and disappeared behind him. "Congratulations, Dib, you've just saved that miserable slobee's life. In fact, I'm going to take it upon myself to repair that amplifier thingy and wake her up, just to see the look on her face when I tell her there's no way off this rock!"  
  
"God, you're evil, Zim." Dib said, devious smirk still plastered across his face.   
  
"That's right, I am." 


	13. Psycho Mercenary Irken Chicks N'stuff

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Dib fell asleep on the couch upstairs. When the adrenaline wore off, he couldn't even stand up straight, he was so tired. He had skool this morning, but he decided against going. It'd been a hell of a night, after all, and he really didn't feel like listening to Ms. Bitters drone on and on about the wonders of the reproductive system. The sunlight was fighting it's way in though the thick green curtains covering the living room windows. Flecks of dust faded in and out of the narrow strip of space that the light had managed to take over. Dib's glasses lay on the coffee table, and his trenchcoat was draped over the arm of a chair. He was still asleep, snoring lightly, sprawled over the couch in the kind of position that only a teenager could fall asleep in.  
  
He rolled over and blinked open his eyes. In his nearsighted haze, he could make out two black and motionless eyes nosed up against his face, surrounded by a mass of brown fur and blood.  
  
"YEEEAHHH!!" Dib screamed and lurched off the couch, landing unceremoniously on the floor. "Oof!"  
  
"HI!" Dib heard a delighted squeaking voice from above him. Looking up, he saw Gir in his dog suit perched on the back of the couch, an insane grin on his face, holding the lifeless mass of brown fur and dried blood in one hand. "Look what I found in the street!" He cheerfully said, triumphantly telescoping an arm out, holding the mangled squirrel in front of Dib's face.  
  
"Aw, man! ZIIIIM!" Dib yelled, his voice cracking, waving away the bloody creature he was being offered. "Your stupid robot brought in roadkill again!"  
  
The green monkey picture above the couch lifted, revealing a screen showing an irritated Zim looking at them in the foreground, and Min at a console typing something in the background, her back to the screen. "Gir! Do you remember what I told you about bringing home animal corpses?" Zim scolded.  
  
Gir stared blankly back. "Umm, yes... Waitaminute--"  
  
"I TOLD you not to bring them in the house! Now take that disgusting maggot-farm thingy outside!"  
  
Crestfallen, the little robot jumped off the couch, squirrel still in hand. "Okay..." He disappeared into the kitchen, and Dib heard through the doorway "YEEEE! There's one dat's still movin'!" followed by the sound of glass being shattered and Gir cackling. Dib flinched when he heard the glass break. "Well, it's a good thing this place repairs itself, because that robot would cost anyone else a FORTUNE in repairs..."  
  
Zim huffed in agreement. "Dib, it was fortunate that Gir woke you up when he did." He added. "I believe I'm finished with Tak's amplifier thingy. Pure genius, if I do say so myself, heh heh. The only thing left now is to power it up, and then--"  
  
"Well, I've calculated the frequencies like you asked me to, Zim." Min interrupted, turning around and heading towards him, her eyes focused on a printout in her hands, and not on the screen. "Problem is, we've only got a tolerance of a few nanopics, and if we give her a jolt that's out of that frequency range, we'll have to scrape her brains off the ceiling with a--OH! Uh, hi, Dib." She said, finally noticing the pale teenager on the other side of the screen.  
  
Dib huffed a laugh and waved half-heartedly. "'Morning. You've been helping too, huh?"  
  
"Yes, she has, and I have to admit she is a natural when it comes to repairing damaged meat-vehicles like Tak." Zim answered over her response. "You'd think she was born to do this, or something." That earned a strange sideward glance from Min.  
  
"You think so?" Min asked flatly, as though it were something she didn't want to hear. "I was just trying to help out. It's just that everything kind of falls into place, and I suddenly just know what to do. It's almost like someone else is telling me what to do..."  
  
"Wait, wait, wait Min. You mean to tell me you DIDN'T know what you were doing when you saved Zim's life?" Dib asked though the video screen.  
  
"Not immediately..." Min fidgeted. Now it was Zim's turn to give a strange look to her.  
  
"That's weird..." He mumbled.  
  
"...Really weird." Dib echoed through the video screen. "So, you have no intention of killing Tak anymore, Zim? None at ALL?"  
  
"Eh? Of course not! Thanks to you, she's in for a fate that's A THOUSAND TIMES worse! I'll meet you down in the cybernetics lab!" Zim punched the END TRANSMISSION button, and the screen went blank.  
  
"So, this 'Tak', she tried to take over the planet, you said?" Min said, half-sitting on the console, almond-shaped eyes fixed on Zim.  
  
"Not quite. She tried to drain Earth of it's magma. She was gonna fill the thing with snacks, and present the entire thing to the Tallests, as some kind of gift, just to get herself another chance to be an Invader. Scary part is, it would've worked, if it hadn't been for me!" He explained, then added as a afterthought: "...And Dib. Come to think of it, that was the first time we were forced to work together. I agreed to help him save this miserable planet, only 'cuz I thought I'd be able to conquer it myself later." He leaned against the console and stared off resentfully into space. "Man, was I wrong..."  
  
"So, you were an Invader..." Min said quietly, an incomprehensible expression on her face. Of course, she already knew. She would have to have been buried alive somewhere to not have heard about Zim, the maniacal, destructive force of nature that was given a role as an Invader just for entertainment value. Prak, she herself remembered laughing at his antics on the oversized holoscreens just like every other soldier in the pits. She didn't like to be reminded of that.  
  
Zim sighed and shook his head. "No, I wasn't really an Invader. They just made me believe I was. I was given sub-standard equipment, and shoved off to the most remote planet possible, just so the Tallest could be rid of me! For two years, I toiled on this ball of dirt and flesh, gathering up every scrap of information I could find, with Dib on my heels at every step! And you know what I got for it? I got stranded here!!" He pounded the console with a clenched fist in an impact that sent thundering reverberations though the metal. Min jumped from the sudden outburst, sliding quickly off the console, staring warily at him. "To make things worse, the stupid, smug, stretched-out TALLEST were laughing at me the whole time! The entire EMPIRE was laughing at me behind my back, and I was the only one not in on the joke!" Fist still clenched against the metal, which now had a tiny depression in it, Zim glanced at Min, who was in a guarded stance, staring intensely back. Regret spread across his face, and he heaved a shaking sigh. "I don't really know where that came from." He said in a distracted tone. He absently reached the hand up to rub his forehead. "I need to learn to better control myself, I suppose... It's not like I can do anything about it all now." He pushed away from the console and started towards the tiny side hatch that lead to the Cybernetics lab. "At least, now that Tak's back, I can have my revenge on her. A meager victory, but one nonetheless."  
  
Min watched him leave, her antennae drooping. "This just keeps getting worse." She said shakily. She wasn't even concerned about Zim's violent outburst, she was so lost in her own dilemma. Not that she didn't understand where he was coming from. That was the problem. At this point, there was no reason in rationalizing her stalling the mission anymore. She just couldn't kill him. He was only trying to survive down here. He'd cut his losses when he was marooned, and now he was just another child of Earth. With every snippet of information she got, she felt more and more sorry for him. Unfortunately, the sympathy she felt was no decent excuse for failure in the eyes of the Tallest. And anyway, was sympathy even supposed to run this deep? She huffed an irritated sigh, and shook her head. Well, if it wasn't sympathy, then what else COULD it be? Besides, she still had that data to transmit, and one out of two wasn't TOO bad. She'd been transmitting it in small packets, the better to keep the defense programs at bay, and the better to keep Zim from getting suspicious. She was overdue for another transmission, but it would have taken too long right then. Not that she really WANTED to, anyway. She still didn't think it was right. Fighting off a second wave of self-loathing, she turned sullenly and followed Zim out though the constricting portal, but not without running her head smack into the top of the arched doorway. *DINK!* "OW! Eergh... Stupid... clumsy..."  
  
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The cybernetics lab smelled slightly of acid and burning metal. The typical ambient light of Zim's base played along the reddish metal surfaces of the walls, floor and lab equipment. Like most of the other chambers in Zim's base, it was large and vacant-looking, with little equipment actually out in the open. Twisted metal tubes and wires hung from above, covering the ceiling and converging in the center of the room, attaching to a huge ruddy metal pillar that was encircled with processing kiosks and protruding robot arms. A few of the tubes on the ceiling hung down loose here and there, attached with bits and tools that were used and just left to hang. Zim was bent over a table that had Tak lying motionless on it, holding a mask in one hand and a proton welding torch in the other, putting some finishing touches on the metal tube on her temple. He turned off the torch and lowered the mask, looking over his work and smiling arrogantly. It looked exactly like it did before. The holographic disguise had even begun to grow over it again, covering the damaged areas now that every molecule was exactly way it was before. God, he was good.  
  
"Zim?" He heard Dib's voice echo from around the pillar.  
  
"Over here, Dib." Zim called back, hanging the mask onto the welding torch and letting go of it as it retracted back into the ceiling. Dib rounded the pillar, heading towards the table, his trenchcoat rippling slightly behind him. Mimi was on his shoulder, craning her neck, trying to get a better view of Tak. Dib stopped walking just long enough to reach up stroke the side of her face, mumbling something quietly to her. Leave it up to Dib to treat a cat-disguised SIR unit like a real cat, Zim thought, bemused. "You know Dib, there's something just not... not right about YOU with HER. I mean, it's almost laughable to think about..."  
  
"And what's wrong with it?" Dib questioned with mock indignation, walking up to Zim. "She was scrapped, I rebuilt her, so that makes her mine."  
  
"DIB HUMAN REBUILT MIMI. DIB HUMAN IS MASTER." Mimi agreed,   
  
the light glinting upon her black metal body as she curled her tail around herself.  
  
Zim regarded Dib with a look that said he'd missed the point completely. "Oookay..."  
  
"So, where's your girlfriend?" Dib asked dryly, smirking at Zim.  
  
"She's not my-- I mean, she-- Eergh! Why do you have to do that, Dib? Stop putting this in human context! I told you, she doesn't think of me as anything more than a companion, or maybe a friend. That's IT."   
  
"Well, what about you? Dib pressed. You said just a few days ago--"  
  
"I SAID that I knew what you meant by human emotions and drives. That doesn't mean I'm experiencing them myself, Dib. You should listen more carefully. It's true, I have been acting strange, but that's just a by-product of this accursed growth spurt thingy. It has to be. It's starting to affect my brains, I know it."   
  
Dib blinked a couple of times, then started chucking out loud at Zim's utter cluelessness. "You mean you haven't made the connection yet, Zim? Come on! Haven't you been paying attention in heath class??"  
  
"...Eh? What does that have to--" Zim was cut short when he noticed Min leaning on the pillar behind Dib. "Uuh, we can talk about this later..." He mumbled to Dib, then looked past him to the female. "What took you so long?"  
  
"I got hung up on a few things..." She said, coyly fiddling with a robot arm. "Literally. Do you have any idea how tiny those tunnels are down there?"  
  
"Yes, I know all too well. I'd make 'em larger, but that program was erased a year ago. So, are we going to do this, or what? Dib, can you give me a hand, here?" He gestured, and Dib followed him to Tak's table. "When we turn this amplifier on, we're gonna be basically jump-starting her brain. So, we're gonna have to restrain her..." Zim explained quietly, clamping a metal cuff around Tak's wrist. Dib nodded and followed suit with the other arm. Zim had started working on her ankle when he heard Min stammer something behind him. "Min?"  
  
She was white. Here crimson eyes wide. She was backing slowly away from the two of them. "Min, are you alright??"   
  
"YEAH! Yes, I'm fine! I just... I'd better go. Y-You don't really need me here, do you? I'm just going to be... out here. All right?" She haltingly answered, still backing away. She nearly broke into a full run when she'd cleared the doorway.  
  
Zim looked back at Dib. "What was THAT all about?" Dib asked.  
  
Zim squinted his eyes in thought. "...I'm not sure. She said she was okay, though..." He answered, trying hard to steel himself against worrying about it. "Come on, Dib. Let's do this. Test electrode!" He barked aloud, which was answered by the very thing he needed snaking from the ceiling on a metal tube. He grabbed it, set the right frequency, and quickly tapped it to the side of Tak's skull. It sparked, and her head jerked to the side, while her body convulsed once, involuntarily. Zim pulled the electrode wand back and let it go, allowing it to disappear into the ceiling. The evil smile returned to his face when he saw Tak's head begin to roll back, with a high groan.  
  
"Uuuugh. My head..." Tak mumbled, as Mimi zipped off Dib's shoulder and onto the table, nuzzling Tak's face. "...Mimi?"  
  
"Welcome back, TAK." Zim gloated, relishing in the chance to be evil again. "I hope that was unpleasant."  
  
The blue-haired girl's gaze snapped to the black-clad irken standing above her. She was silent at first, just looking him up and down. "...Zim?" She finally said, not without it's share of confusion.  
  
"Yes. It is I. Zim. You just couldn't stay away from here, could you Tak?"  
  
"Oh, go suck a slobee, Zim. I came here to get OFF this useless hunk of dirt. That's all I'm worried about now. The knowledge of how pathetic your existence really is, is vengeance enough for me..."  
  
Zim's antennae flattened against his head in as he scowled at her. Somehow, he managed to keep control and not rip her apart right there. "Look who's talking! A helpless escapee janitor like YOU has no right to call Zim pathetic! And after what the Tallest did to ME, did you really think they would make YOU an Invader just because of some huge tribute of salty snack foods? Who's the pathetic one here, Tak?"  
  
Tak was unfazed. "So, you finally got it through your overly-thick cranium that the Tallest had no intention on invading Earth." She said, a smile of satisfaction on her face.  
  
"Yes, I learned that the hard way a year ago, when they crippled my base and destroyed my cruiser, cutting off every possible way off this planet. Now I'm stuck here, with no way back home."  
  
Tak's smile faded. "What?"  
  
Oh, the evil grin on Zim's face. "You heard me. Make yourself comfortable, Tak. You're gonna be staying here a while."  
  
Tak's shock turned to panic, as though she suddenly realized the position she was in. She started to pull against the restraining cuffs. "What, what are you gonna do to me, Zim?   
  
"Nothing. Even if I wanted to further your suffering, I couldn't. You see, Dib here..." He gave a nod to Dib, calling Tak's attention to the teenage human on the other side of the table. "...brought you here after he fried your brainmeats. I, of course, was intent on liquefying you, but HE stopped me. The HUMAN saved your life, Tak." Zim added teasingly.  
  
"The HUMAN?? HE SAVED ME!?" Tak screeched, still pulling on the metal cuffs, which were beginning to draw green blood. "No! I-I don't believe you!"  
  
Dib, at first shocked by her extreme reaction, shot a quizzical look at Zim. "...Did I miss something here?"  
  
He received the same look back. "You don't remember what I told you about irkens, Dib?" He asked, and when he read Dib's blank expression, Zim started to laugh. "You don't, do you? Well, that explains a lot. Alright, lemme spell it out for you. You saved her life, so she belongs to you until she returns the favor, or you let her go."  
  
"...WHAT??" Dib screeched. All Tak did was groan from the agonizing blow to her ego. "But, but but I don't WANT her!"  
  
"Hey, you can let her go anytime you want." Zim shrugged. "BUT!" He interrupted Dib's next sentence. "If you do, she's fair game for me, and I'll make sure she wishes she were never smeeted..."  
  
"Oh, COME ON, Zim!" Dib practically whined. "She tried to kill me in my sleep! Why would I want this psycho mercenary irken chick anywhere around me?"  
  
"HEY! Who are you calling a mercenary?" Tak yelled.  
  
"If she's any kind of real irken, then she won't lay a finger on you. Besides, I have a feeling you can defend yourself against her..." He jerked a finger downwards, in the direction of the arena. "If I know you..."  
  
Dib nodded slightly, realitization lighting his face. "You think I can?" Zim nodded, evil smirk still on his face. Dib fidgeted, and looked at Tak, who was drilling holes into them with her hard indigo-irised eyes. "...Alright."  
  
Tak hissed in despair and threw her head back against the table. "Corn. Now I'm indebted to a human..."  
  
"Hey, I'm not happy about it, either..." Dib mumbled, and noticed her wrists were still bleeding. The skin around it was flashing green. "You know, that's probably gonna leave a scar..."  
  
Zim's eyes widened, as she studied her wrist. "Oh, no..."  
  
"What, Zim?"  
  
"Min. Her wrists. The-- Oh, slark!! What have I done? I have to find her!" He started towards the exit hatch, and turned around. "Get Tak out of those cuffs, Dib! There's no need for them anymore!"  
  
"Heh, alone? I don't think so, Zim!"  
  
"Fine! Take a trip downstairs first! Just get her out of here!" With that, he disappeared through the hatch.  
  
"...What was THAT all about?" Tak mumbled, arching an eyebrow. Her confusion turned to anger as Dib just quietly gathered Mimi up and mumbled something to her, then put her down and turned towards an elevator hatch that lead down to the arena. "Where are you going? You'd better stop and explain things, human, or else I--"  
  
"Oh, shut up, Tak." Surprisingly, she did, but she didn't look happy about it. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes to get you out of here. I set Mimi on guard until I get back."  
  
"Another thing we have to discuss, monkey boy. My own SIR unit is guarding against me..."  
  
"Actually, she's guarding YOU against ZIM, should he decide to come back." The fourteen-year-old made his way to the elevator and started to descend. "This won't take long. Now don't go anywhere..." His voice echoed up from the elevator shaft, followed by shortened laughter.  
  
"Sleck off, Dib!" Tak yelled back, leaning against her restraints. "Stupid fidgety human..."  
  
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End file.
